AI Overlay for SMOWL Proctoring on Mac
SMOWL is the proctoring product built by Smiley Owl Tech (Smowltech) of Spain. It is the de-facto proctoring layer for UNIR (International University of La Rioja) and other large Spanish online universities, and ships primarily as a Chromium browser extension with an optional Browser Lock mode.
SMOWL is a Chromium-only extension. The vendor explicitly does not support Safari or Firefox; the extension is published for Chrome, Edge, Opera, Brave, and Vivaldi. The classic SMOWL product runs in "monitoring" mode, periodically snapping the webcam and the screen and uploading the pair to Smowltech servers for asynchronous AI review. The newer SMOWL Extension adds a Browser Lock feature that monitors tab/window switching, new-window opening, copy/paste, screen-print, keyboard combinations, and forced-close attempts. Crucially, Browser Lock blocks behavior inside the browser but cannot reach outside it: a separate macOS application window owned by a different process is invisible to its event hooks.
No. Face recognition uses the webcam to match your face against the photo on file. The webcam pipeline is independent from screen capture.
No. Browser Lock hooks live inside the browser process and observe keyboard combos sent to the browser. Fracture uses a system-wide hot-key handled below the browser.
No. SMOWL Moodle integration is an LTI handoff; the actual capture still runs in the same Chromium extension on Mac.
Yes. The AI reviews the snapshots and video SMOWL captured. Those captures were filtered through macOS compositor at capture time.
Yes. Spain AEPD has investigated SMOWL deployments after student complaints (notably the HUxIR case at UNIR).
Need reference access during your exam?
Fracture runs a native floating overlay that sets the macOS window privacy flag. It is 100% excluded from screen capture feeds, window lists, and proctor recordings.