Is LockedIn AI Detectable? (2026)

Short answer: the browser-extension version of LockedIn AI is detectable, and you don't have to take our word for it — LockedIn's own support docs tell you how to hide it during a screen share, and real users report being caught. The separate desktop app makes stronger stealth claims, but those claims are unverified. This matters because LockedIn ships two different products under one name, and which one you install decides whether you're exposed.

We build Interview Coder, a desktop AI assistant for live coding interviews, so we compete with LockedIn AI. Read this with that bias in mind. Every claim about LockedIn below links to a source we pulled this week — the vendor's own pages, the Chrome Web Store, their support docs, and independent reviews. Check our work.

LockedIn AI is not one tool. It is two:

The browser extension is detectable, and that verdict is sourced three different ways below. The desktop app makes specific invisibility claims that we cannot verify either way — there is no external audit, and there are reports it can still be seen. The honest framing is "mixed": one product is provably exposed by the vendor's own admission, the other asks you to trust an unverified claim.

That structure is the exact opposite of how a stealth tool should be built. A browser extension lives inside the one window you are most likely to share. We'll get into why that's the core problem.

Here is the same comparison in one view, including a native desktop app with OS-level window exclusion as the baseline:

The rest of this guide sources each cell in the "browser extension" column, then explains why the "desktop app" column is claims rather than proof.

Start with the architecture, because it explains everything else.

A browser extension is not a separate application. It runs inside your browser — it renders in the toolbar, it injects into pages, and it is part of the window you have open. When an interviewer asks you to share your screen and you share the Chrome window or the Chrome tab, the extension's UI goes with it. There is no OS-level boundary between "the browser" and "the thing running in the browser," because they are the same surface.

This is why the screen-share path is the whole ballgame for an extension-based tool. The candidate either shares their entire screen (extension visible), shares the browser window (extension visible), or has to carefully share only a tab that does not contain the tool (fragile, and the interviewer can ask you to switch). A native desktop app with OS-level window exclusion can tell the operating system "never include me in a capture," which is a guarantee an extension structurally cannot make.

LockedIn AI's own marketing concedes this point. Their desktop-app page explicitly contrasts "Desktop App" against "Web Tools" and labels the web tools as carrying a "Risk of exposure during interviews" (lockedinai.com/desktop-app). That is the vendor telling you, on their own sales page, that the browser product can be seen. The desktop app exists because the browser version is exposed.

Here is the evidence for the browser-extension path, on three independent grounds.

This is the architectural point above, applied directly. The extension renders inside the shared browser and toolbar. Share the screen or the Chrome tab and it is there. This is not a bug or a detection algorithm catching it — it is simply visible, the same way any browser extension's UI is visible when you share the browser. No proctoring software required; a human interviewer looking at the shared screen can see it.

Walk through what actually happens in a real call. The interviewer says "share your whole screen so I can see the code." You pick "Entire Screen" in the share picker — the safe-feeling default, because sharing only a tab risks fumbling which tab. Now everything the OS draws is in the stream: the LockedIn extension's toolbar icon, any panel it has open, and any pop-up it raises when an answer comes in. From our seat building a competing tool, this is the single most common way candidates get caught: not a clever proctoring algorithm, just a second pair of human eyes watching a pixel-for-pixel copy of a window that has the tool living inside it. The candidate's only defense is to remember, under interview stress, to never share the full screen and never share the browser — which is exactly the manual burden LockedIn's own support docs hand back to the user (see below).

This is the strongest single source, because it comes from LockedIn itself. Their support documentation — a page literally titled "how to share the screen without being caught" — gives candidates manual workarounds:

Read that carefully. If the tool were invisible, there would be nothing to hide and no instructions needed. The existence of a "how to not get caught" guide is a direct admission that, by default, you can get caught. The tool is visible, and the burden of hiding it is pushed onto the user, manually, in the middle of a live interview — exactly when you least want one more thing to manage.

Independent sources back up the structural argument with actual reports:

That third point is important: the report suggests the desktop app's transparent overlay was also visible during a share for at least some users. We treat that as a user report rather than a controlled test — but it lands directly against the desktop app's marketing.

LockedIn AI's desktop app page makes a list of specific stealth claims:

Here is where we have to be precise, because this is where a lot of competitor write-ups overreach. We are not calling the desktop app "detectable." We don't have a sourced detection report for the desktop app the way we do for the browser extension. What we can say is that these are unverified vendor claims. There is no external audit cited. There is no independent test we can point to that confirms "invisible on task manager" or "completely hidden during screen sharing" holds up. And there is at least one user report (the Interview Sidekick review above) pushing the other way.

So the honest position on the desktop app is: they claim it, but nobody has shown it. That is a meaningfully weaker position than a claim you can reason about from architecture plus independent evidence. "Trust us" is not the same as "here is why it works, and here is proof."

If you want to see how that gap plays out across the whole category, our best AI interview tools for 2026 roundup applies the same sourcing standard to every tool, and the Cluely review and Parakeet AI review walk through two other overlay tools the same way.

It's worth separating two different threats, because tools blur them on purpose.

Screen-share visibility. Can a human interviewer, or the candidate's own shared screen, reveal the tool? For a browser extension, the answer is yes by default — see above. This is the most common way people get caught, and it has nothing to do with fancy proctoring.

Proctoring and process detection. Platforms like HackerRank and CoderPad invest in their own signals — focus-loss events, paste detection, tab switching, and more. If you want the platform side, we've documented how HackerRank detects cheating, the broader picture of HackerRank cheating, and how CoderPad handles cheating detection.

A tool that fails the first test — basic screen-share visibility — never even gets to the second. LockedIn's browser extension fails the first test, by its own documentation. That is the headline.

We built Interview Coder to never have the screen-share problem in the first place, because the screen-share problem is an architecture problem, not a settings problem.

No browser extension. Interview Coder is a native desktop app, full stop. There is nothing running inside your browser to share by accident. This is the single biggest structural difference from LockedIn AI: there is no "web tools" version with a "risk of exposure," because there is no web version.

OS-level window exclusion. On macOS, Interview Coder uses the operating system's window-sharing controls (sharingType / per-window picker isolation) so the app is excluded from screen capture at the OS level. On Windows, it uses SetWindowDisplayAffinity, the same OS primitive that legitimate apps use to keep content out of screenshots and shares. The exclusion is enforced by the operating system, not by asking you to manually click "Hide" on a pop-up.

Invisible where it counts. The overlay does not appear in your screen share, it does not show in Activity Monitor or the dock, the overlay is click-through, and the whole thing is keyboard-only so there are no mouse movements giving it away.

Proof, not just claims. This is the part we hold ourselves to. Interview Coder reports 100,000+ users and zero documented detection cases. It is the only tool in this category with face-shown video recordings of real interviews — Amazon, Oracle, Roblox, Snowflake, Citadel, IBM, Capital One — plus verified offer-letter screenshots from Meta, Google, Apple, and TikTok. Coding answers run on Claude Sonnet 4.6, Anthropic's latest Sonnet model.

We'll say the honest caveat plainly, because anyone who tells you otherwise is selling: no real-time tool can promise 100% undetectability. What separates tools is whether the undetectability is something you can verify. With LockedIn's browser extension, it's verifiably not hidden by default. With its desktop app, it's an unverified claim. With Interview Coder, it's an architecture you can reason about, backed by face-shown evidence and zero documented detection cases to date. They claim. We show.

If you want the full side-by-side on this specific matchup, see our LockedIn AI alternative page.

The full native-vs-browser detection picture across HackerRank, CoderPad, Zoom and the rest is in our undetectable AI interview tool guide.

If the question is "can I get caught using LockedIn AI," the answer for the default browser product is clearly yes. The desktop upgrade exists precisely because that's true — but you'd be paying to trade a documented exposure for an unverified promise.

The cleaner answer is to not run a tool inside the window you're about to share. A native desktop app with OS-enforced window exclusion and no browser extension removes the failure mode entirely. Full disclosure: this guide is published by Interview Coder, its own product. Interview Coder is a desktop app used by 100K+ engineers for live coding interviews — it reads the problem on your screen and generates working solutions with explanations in real time, powered by Claude Sonnet 4.6, with OS-level stealth and face-shown real-interview recordings as proof. Start free, go Monthly Pro at $299, or pay $799 once for lifetime access — no subscription, nothing to cancel.