Inspera vs Respondus LockDown Browser - European vs US Lockdown
Inspera dominates Norwegian, Dutch, UK, and increasingly Spanish university exams; Respondus dominates the US. They share the goal (deliver a locked-down exam in a browser) but split on architecture, distribution, and how aggressively they monitor.
Inspera Exam Portal on Mac is a Chromium-based shell that points at your institution's Inspera URL and disables app switching for the session. Live proctoring, when enabled, comes from a separate vendor (Examity, ProctorExam, IRIS Connect) over WebRTC. Respondus is more vertically integrated: LockDown Browser handles both the lockdown and the proctoring add-on (Respondus Monitor) in one stack. The capture surfaces are different on paper but identical in practice on Mac: both go through ScreenCaptureKit, both filter out flagged windows.
Practically identical. Both share the macOS capture privacy mechanism the overlay relies on.
It tries to block app-switching shortcuts, but the overlay's Carbon hotkey (Ctrl-Cmd-L) registers below the application layer and survives.
Universities pick one or the other; you would not run both. The overlay supports either.
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.