Proctoring
Proctorio and AI overlays, a technical breakdown
What Proctorio inspects, what it cannot see, and how Whisply's overlay sits outside the surfaces a browser-based proctor is allowed to read on macOS.
Proctorio is a Chrome extension. It can read the browser tab, periodic webcam frames, and microphone audio. It cannot read a system-level macOS overlay that opts out of capture.
- Proctorio runs as a Chrome or Edge extension and inspects the browser surface, the webcam feed, and the microphone stream.
- Whisply is a Mac-native menu bar overlay rendered above the browser by the macOS window server, not inside the tab.
- Whisply sets its windows to opt out of screen capture, so screenshots and screen-share frames render around it.
Proctorio's own help docs describe its review signals as browser-focus events, webcam frames sampled on a schedule, and audio amplitude, all collected through web APIs the extension is permitted to call.
How Proctorio detects external apps
Proctorio is delivered as a Chrome or Edge extension. Once a student starts an exam in a supported LMS, the extension requests camera, microphone, and screen-capture permission through standard browser APIs, then records signals for the full session. Those signals include browser focus and blur events on the exam tab, copy and paste activity, mouse exit from the viewport, periodic webcam frames analyzed for face presence and a second person, microphone amplitude for voices and ambient sound, a getDisplayMedia stream of the shared display, network drop events, and a coarse environment scan at the start. Everything is uploaded for instructor-side review rather than scored entirely in real time.
How Whisply’s overlay isolation works
Whisply runs as a native macOS menu bar app. Its overlay panel is an NSWindow with sharing type set to NSWindowSharingNone, which tells the system compositor to exclude that window from any screen capture the OS produces. Screenshots, QuickTime recordings, Zoom screen shares, and the getDisplayMedia frame a browser extension receives all read from the composited window list, so the Whisply panel is rendered around rather than included. The panel also lives at a window level above normal document windows and is owned by a separate process Chrome has no API to enumerate, so the exam tab cannot reach into it.
How Proctorio actually works
Proctorio is a browser extension that loads when a student opens an exam in a supported LMS. It asks for camera, microphone, and screen-capture permission through the browser, then collects signals for the entire session and uploads them for an instructor or an automated reviewer to flag later. There is no separate desktop agent. Everything Proctorio sees, it sees through Chromium APIs and the permissions a student grants on the consent screen.
The signals fall into a few buckets. Browser-focus events fire when the tab loses or regains focus, so a Cmd+Tab to another app produces a flag. The webcam feed is sampled on a schedule and run through face detection to check for a present test taker, a second person in frame, or a phone in hand. The microphone stream is analyzed for voices and ambient noise. A getDisplayMedia call captures the screen the browser was asked to share, which is usually the full primary display.
What Proctorio does not see
Because Proctorio lives inside a Chromium process, its view of your Mac is bounded by what the browser will hand it. The extension cannot enumerate other running applications. It cannot read accessibility events from outside the tab. It cannot inspect the macOS window list. The screen frame it receives is whatever the macOS window server hands back when a getDisplayMedia request is honored, and that frame respects system-level content protection on individual windows.
This is the part most write-ups get wrong. A screenshot taken by a browser extension is not a raw GPU framebuffer dump. It is a composited frame produced by macOS, and macOS will exclude any window that has set its sharing type to none. Apple ships that capability for a reason. FaceTime uses it. 1Password uses it. Banking apps use it. Whisply uses it.
Where Whisply sits in the window stack
Whisply is not a browser tab and not a Chrome extension. It is a native AppKit application that lives in the macOS menu bar and draws its UI through NSWindow objects rendered by the system compositor. When you summon it with Cmd+Return, a panel-style window appears above the active app at a window level higher than normal document windows. That panel is owned by Whisply, not by Chrome, and Chrome has no API to read it.
The result for a Proctorio session is straightforward. Proctorio sees the exam tab. Proctorio sees the webcam. Proctorio sees the microphone. The Whisply panel sits in a layer the browser cannot reach into, and the screen frame the browser is allowed to grab arrives without the panel composited into it. The exam looks like the exam, with the Whisply overlay private to you on the same physical display.
A short history of browser-based proctoring
Browser proctoring grew out of the shift to remote testing in the late 2010s. The early generation, Respondus LockDown Browser and Examplify, replaced the whole browser with a locked Chromium fork that disabled keyboard shortcuts and aggressively inspected the host machine. They demanded a fresh process and full screen control because that was the only way to reach the OS at all.
Proctorio took a different bet. Rather than ship a custom browser, run as an extension inside the browser the student already uses and rely on instructor-side review to catch issues after the fact. That choice made Proctorio easier to deploy across institutions, but it also drew a firm boundary around what the product can technically observe. An extension does not get to walk the macOS process table the way a kernel agent does, and Proctorio has been honest about that scope in its public documentation.
Where the boundaries actually land
The honest summary is that Proctorio is good at the things a browser is good at watching. Tab switches. Copy and paste inside the tab. Right-click menus. Webcam frames. Microphone audio. Connection drops. Each of those produces a signal that an instructor can review, and the false-positive rate on those signals has been the subject of plenty of legitimate criticism in academic publications.
What Proctorio is not, by design, is a full endpoint-monitoring product. It does not install a driver. It does not read your other windows. It does not have a privileged hook into the macOS compositor. Anyone telling you that a Chromium extension can see arbitrary native windows on a modern Mac is selling something, because the OS does not grant that access to web content.
Limits, and saying so
No overlay can promise to be invisible in every condition forever. If you share your screen through a tool that records the raw display rather than the composited window list, content protection will not save you. If you point a second phone at your Mac, a webcam-side reviewer is going to notice. If you read answers out loud, the microphone is going to hear you. Whisply's job is to stay out of the surfaces Proctorio is allowed to read on macOS, and that is what the architecture is built to do.
We would rather tell you exactly what the system does and where it stops than promise something we cannot deliver. The compatibility table below is the same one we use internally when QA tests a release against a Proctorio sandbox.
Compatibility matrix
| Scenario | Whisply behavior |
|---|---|
| Proctorio extension active in Chrome on macOS, Whisply summoned with Cmd+Return | Whisply panel renders above the Chrome window on your display. The getDisplayMedia frame Proctorio reads from the OS arrives without the panel in it because content protection is set on the window. |
| Cmd+Tab to a different application during a Proctorio session | Proctorio logs a focus-blur event on the exam tab because the tab itself loses focus when another app comes forward. Summoning Whisply with the hotkey keeps Chrome the foreground app, so no focus event fires. |
| Cmd+Shift+5 system screenshot tool while Whisply is visible | The captured image renders the Whisply panel as empty space. Apple's own screenshot pipeline honors the same content-protection flag the browser does. |
| Zoom screen share started during a proctored session | Other participants see the exam tab. The Whisply panel is excluded from the shared frame in both full-display and single-window share modes. |
| Second monitor attached during the exam | Proctorio can detect a second display through a screen enumeration API and will typically flag the session. Whisply does not change that signal. The Whisply panel itself is still excluded from any captured frame on either display. |
| Webcam pointed at your face while Whisply is on screen | The webcam feed is a separate input that does not capture your display. The eye-movement pattern of reading the overlay is visible to a human reviewer if the panel is positioned where it pulls your gaze noticeably off the exam content. |
| Proctorio environment scan at the start of the exam | The environment scan asks you to pan the webcam around the room. It is unrelated to on-screen content. Whisply does not interact with it in either direction. |
| Computer Use mode on Pro Undetected during a Proctorio session | Computer Use drives clicks and keystrokes through the macOS Accessibility API on your own machine. Proctorio sees the resulting tab activity the same way it sees any user input. The Whisply window driving it remains outside the captured frame. |
A note on academic honesty
Whisply stays out of screen capture on macOS because of how the operating system composites windows. That is a technical fact, not permission to break an exam you agreed to take. If your institution's honor code prohibits unauthorized assistance, using any tool to receive that assistance is a violation regardless of whether a vendor flags the session. The choice to use Whisply during a graded assessment, and the consequences of it, sit with the person at the keyboard. Plenty of users run Whisply during job interviews, client calls, and study, where no honor code is in play. Be honest with yourself about which category you are in.
Related questions
Does Proctorio detect AI overlays running outside the browser on a Mac?
Proctorio is a browser extension, so it can only read what the browser hands it. The screen frame Chrome returns to an extension is composited by macOS and excludes windows that have set content protection. A native macOS overlay like Whisply that opts out of capture is not present in that frame. Proctorio can still detect focus loss on the exam tab, second monitors, and webcam-side cues, so the answer is not a blanket no for every overlay product, but the specific case of a system-level menu bar overlay is outside its read path on macOS.
Does Whisply trigger a browser focus event when I summon it?
No. Whisply opens as a separate macOS window owned by its own process and rendered above Chrome. Chrome remains the foreground application from the operating system's perspective, so the visibility-change and blur events Proctorio listens for on the tab do not fire when you press Cmd+Return.
Will Proctorio see Whisply in a screenshot it captures during the exam?
Whisply's windows are flagged with NSWindowSharingNone, which tells the macOS compositor to exclude them from any captured frame. Apple's screenshot tool, QuickTime, Zoom screen share, and the getDisplayMedia API a browser extension uses all read from that same composited surface, so the panel renders as the background underneath rather than as itself.
Can Proctorio detect Whisply through the webcam?
Not directly, since the webcam does not see your screen. A human reviewer watching the webcam recording could notice eye movement that does not match what the exam tab is showing. Whisply lets you reposition the overlay so it sits close to the area of the screen you are already reading, which keeps eye motion natural.
What about audio? Proctorio listens to the microphone.
Whisply responds visually in the overlay. It does not speak answers out loud. The microphone stream Proctorio analyzes captures your room audio, so if you read overlay content aloud or have someone else in the room, that is what gets picked up. The overlay itself produces no sound on your machine.
Does the Free tier of Whisply behave the same way during a Proctorio session?
The window-level content protection that keeps Whisply out of screen capture is part of how the macOS overlay is built, so it applies on Free, Pro, and Pro Undetected. The proctor-resistant features that handle the trickier sandboxed proctors and Computer Use are on Pro Undetected. For a Chrome-extension proctor like Proctorio, the baseline overlay isolation does most of the work.
Is using Whisply during a Proctorio exam allowed?
That depends entirely on the rules of the assessment you are taking. Whisply does not make a determination about your honor code. If outside assistance is prohibited, using any AI tool during the exam is a violation of those rules regardless of whether a particular proctoring product flags the session. We are explicit about that on every page of this site.
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