Is LockedIn AI Detectable? Why Browser Extensions Can't Hide From Screen Share

Short answer: it depends entirely on which LockedIn AI you run. The company ships more than one product, and they do not all hide the same way. One form factor can genuinely be excluded from a screen share at the operating-system level. Another one structurally cannot — not because of a bug, but because of where the pixels are drawn.

This post is about the architecture, not gossip. If you understand how screen-share exclusion actually works, you stop guessing about whether a tool “gets caught” and start reasoning about it. That understanding is useful no matter which tool you use — including ours.

Let’s go through it plainly.

First: what a screen share actually captures

When you share your screen on Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, the app asks the operating system for the pixels of a display or a window. On Windows that path is the Desktop Duplication API or Windows Graphics Capture; on macOS it’s ScreenCaptureKit. The call returns whatever the OS compositor hands back (Adam Svoboda’s technical writeup, 2025).

Two facts follow from this, and they explain nearly everything:

1. A video-call app captures pixels, not processes. Zoom does not enumerate the programs you have open. It receives a rectangle of composited pixels. That is why “invisible in Task Manager” claims are a separate question from “invisible in screen share” — a plain Zoom call never reads your process list at all.
2. The compositor decides which windows are in that rectangle. If a window is flagged to be excluded, the compositor drops it before the pixels ever reach Zoom. If a window is not a separate OS window — say, it’s drawn inside a web page — there is nothing for the compositor to drop.

That second point is the whole ballgame.

The two exclusion APIs (and what they can touch)

There are exactly two mechanisms a native application uses to remove itself from screen capture:

• macOS: a native window sets NSWindow.sharingType = .none (NSWindowSharingNone), and the window server excludes it from capture (Svoboda).
• Windows: a native window calls SetWindowDisplayAffinity(hwnd, WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE), available since Windows 10 version 2003. The Desktop Window Manager then excludes that window from every output path — BitBlt, DXGI Desktop Duplication, Windows Graphics Capture — before the pixels reach the capturing app (Microsoft Learn).

The critical word in both is native window. These APIs operate on an OS-level window handle. They have no way to reach inside another window and hide a region of it.

Form factor	Where the overlay is drawn	Has its own OS window to exclude?	Can the compositor drop it from a share?
Native desktop app	Its own top-level OS window	Yes	Yes — via the two APIs above
Browser extension overlay	Inside the browser tab’s DOM/pixels	No	No — it’s part of the page’s pixels
Browser tab / web app	Inside the browser window	No	No — captured like any other tab

Why a browser extension can’t use those APIs

A browser-extension overlay is painted inside the browser’s own window, as part of the page’s DOM. To the operating system, there is no separate “assistant window” — there is a Chrome window, and the overlay is just some of Chrome’s pixels. When you share that Chrome window (or your whole screen), the overlay is captured exactly like the rest of the page (mechanism per Svoboda).

There is no sharingType = .none you can set on “part of a web page.” The exclusion flag needs an OS window, and an extension doesn’t have one. This is not a setting someone forgot to flip. It is a structural property of running inside the browser.

The same logic applies to any tool whose interface is a browser tab or web app: the tab is inside the browser window, so it shows up in the share.

Where LockedIn AI fits

Here is the useful part, because LockedIn AI is an unusually clean illustration — it ships several form factors at once. As of July 2026, its own site lists (lockedinai.com, accessed 2026-07-12):

• a web app (Chrome, Edge, Chromium, Opera, Brave),
• a desktop app for Windows 10+ and macOS 13.1+, and
• a VSCode/Cursor extension for coding-editor integration.

LockedIn’s marketing describes the desktop app running “in full Stealth Mode” and staying “completely invisible during screen sharing,” and says “there are no LockedIn AI overlays, no helper presence, and no UI elements visible” (lockedinai.com and support center, accessed 2026-07-12).

Map that against the architecture:

• The desktop app is a native application. It has its own OS window, so it can use sharingType = .none / WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE. This is the form factor that can legitimately be excluded from a screen share — the same class of mechanism a well-built native tool uses.
• The web app and the browser/editor extension paths draw their interface inside the browser (or the editor). They have no separate OS window to exclude. On the architecture alone, those are the surfaces that appear in a share.

So the answer to “is LockedIn AI detectable?” is: the desktop stealth app is the one designed to be excluded; the web/extension surfaces are, by construction, page pixels. A reviewer at Interview Sidekick reports (updated June 2026) that the browser-extension version is visible during screen sharing — which is exactly what the mechanism predicts. Treat that specific review as a single interested-party account, but note that you don’t need the review to reach the conclusion: the physics get you there.

LockedIn itself even publishes guidance on not getting caught. Its support center hosts an article whose title is “How to do share the screen without being caught” (support.lockedinai.com), and a LockedIn blog post from 2024-07-03, “Screen Share Strategies,” advises users to “make sure the tool does not fire off notifications and does not place icons on the main monitor” and to drive it “through keyboard shortcuts so that you do not visibly switch back to the tab” (lockedinai.com/blog). A tool that were truly invisible would leave nothing to coach around; a company that markets total stealth and separately teaches its users how to avoid detection is telling you, in its own words, that the leak risk exists and has to be managed by hand. We’re citing both by their own indexed titles, as LockedIn’s own pages.

We’re deliberately not putting a price on LockedIn AI here — its dollar amounts are rendered client-side and reported inconsistently by third parties, and this post is about architecture, not cost. If you want the pricing and feature breakdown, that belongs on the LockedIn AI alternative page.

Even native exclusion is not magic

It would be dishonest to stop at “native good, browser bad.” Native window exclusion is real, but it is not a security guarantee, and any tool — ours included — inherits the same limits:

• Svoboda found, first-hand, that QuickTime’s screen recorder bypassed the protection entirely, and that Zoom needs “Advanced capture with window filtering” enabled for exclusion to behave (Svoboda).
• Microsoft’s own documentation warns SetWindowDisplayAffinity is not a DRM/security guarantee — for example, a photograph of the screen still captures the content (Microsoft Learn).
• Certain capture paths (DirectX, GPU frame grabs, kernel-level captures) and old OS builds can still see an excluded window (Svoboda).

And separately from the screen share entirely: proctored coding assessments sometimes make you run a companion app that reads your process list, and interviewers can pick up on behavioral tells regardless of what’s on screen. We cover that side in Is Cluely detectable?. The one-line summary: a plain video call sees pixels, not processes — but not every interview is a plain video call.

Where Dusky stands (the honest version)

Dusky is a native desktop app, not a browser extension and not a web app. It registers as a screen-share-excluded window at the operating-system level: on macOS via the system content protection API, on Windows via the display affinity API. Video-conferencing apps respect that flag and skip the window when you share your screen (stealth-mode docs). Because it’s the same class of native exclusion described above, it works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Slack Huddles, and CoderPad, and even a screen recording of the window shows its contents as blank.

Two differences from LockedIn’s setup are worth stating plainly:

1. There is no leaky form factor to pick wrong. We don’t ship a browser extension or a web app alongside the desktop app, so there’s no version of Dusky that lives inside the page’s pixels. You can’t accidentally run the surface that leaks, because we don’t build one.
2. There is no stealth toggle to forget. Invisibility is on by default, every session — “there is no stealth on/off switch to leave in the wrong position before a call” (stealth-mode docs). The overlay is always capture-excluded; even the small corner hint pill is invisible to the share.

And the caveats we keep on every page, because they’re true for us too: test before every real interview (Dusky ships a built-in invisibility test), set Zoom’s “Advanced capture with window filtering,” know that corporate MDM/group-policy machines can block the permissions Dusky needs, that macOS requires the Screen Recording permission for exclusion to work, and that no software stops a phone camera or certain low-level capture paths. We don’t claim “100%,” because the physics above don’t allow anyone to.

If you’d rather see it than read about it, we keep an honest self-assessment at Is Dusky detectable?, including a side-by-side screen-share demo.

Try it and test it yourself

You don’t have to take our word for the mechanism — you can reproduce it. Install Dusky, join a test call from a second device, share your screen, and check whether the overlay appears. The free trial gives you 15 minutes of AI-assistance time (the clock only counts while Dusky is actively answering, not while it sits idle), with no credit card required. Download at getdusky.app.

If you decide to keep using it, the passes are flat one-time purchases — $19 for a 7-day Weekly Pass or $69 for the 8-week Job Hunt Pass — not a recurring meter. To be upfront: all sales are final and we don’t offer refunds, which is exactly why the trial exists, so you can run the screen-share test before you pay a cent. See pricing for the full details.

FAQ

Is LockedIn AI visible during a screen share?

It depends on which version you use. LockedIn AI’s desktop app is a native application that can be excluded from screen capture at the OS level, and the company markets it as “completely invisible during screen sharing” (lockedinai.com support, accessed 2026-07-12). Its browser-extension and web-app surfaces draw their interface inside the browser page, which has no separate OS window to exclude — so on the architecture, those are the surfaces that appear in a share, and at least one third-party review reports exactly that.

Why can a native app hide from screen share but a browser extension can’t?

Screen-capture exclusion is done by the operating-system compositor, and it operates on a native window handle (NSWindow.sharingType = .none on macOS, SetWindowDisplayAffinity with WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE on Windows). A browser extension has no separate OS window — its overlay is painted inside the browser tab, so it’s captured as part of the page’s pixels. There’s no window handle to flag (Microsoft Learn; Svoboda).

Does the interviewer’s Zoom see what apps I have open?

No. A plain video call captures pixels from a display or window; it does not enumerate your running processes. That’s a different threat model, and it usually shows up only in proctored assessments that require you to run a companion app that inspects your process list. We cover that distinction in Is Cluely detectable?.

Is any interview tool truly 100% undetectable?

No, and you should be skeptical of anyone who says otherwise. Native OS exclusion is real, but it can be bypassed by some capture paths (QuickTime, GPU/kernel grabs), fails on certain old OS builds, and does nothing against a photo of your screen (Svoboda; Microsoft Learn). “100%” is a marketing claim, not a technical one.

How is Dusky’s approach different from LockedIn AI’s?

Dusky ships only a native desktop app — no browser extension or web app — so there’s no form factor that lives inside the page and leaks. Invisibility is always on by default with no toggle to forget (stealth-mode docs). LockedIn’s desktop app is a native application that can use the same class of native exclusion (we haven’t tested their implementation); the practical difference is that with Dusky there’s no leaky version to run by mistake. For a full feature and pricing comparison, see the LockedIn AI alternative page.

How do I confirm my setup is actually hidden?

Test it before every real interview. Join a call from a second device, share your screen, and verify the overlay doesn’t appear — Dusky includes a built-in invisibility test for exactly this, and we recommend enabling Zoom’s “Advanced capture with window filtering” setting first. Read the honest, caveat-included breakdown at Is Dusky detectable?.