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Home/Is PhantomCode Detectable

Is PhantomCode Detectable? An Engineering Answer for 2026

TL;DR

No — PhantomCode is not detectable by screen-sharing, screen-recording, or proctoring software. The overlay window is excluded from screen capture at the OS level (using NSWindowSharingNone on macOS and the WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE flag on Windows), the process does not register in the dock, taskbar, or Activity Monitor / Task Manager process trees that interviewers can see, and it draws as click-through transparent so cursor hover and clicks pass through to the interview app underneath.

How PhantomCode stays invisible

The undetectability claim is enforced at the operating-system level, not by the application's UI. When PhantomCode creates its overlay window, it sets a capture-exclusion flag understood by every modern video-conferencing app, screen recorder, and remote-proctoring agent on the platform.

  • macOS: NSWindowSharingNone tells Core Graphics to exclude the window from any screen-capture API call (CGDisplayStream, SCStream, ScreenCaptureKit). Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, OBS, QuickTime, Loom, and Apple's own screen-recording shortcut all use these APIs.
  • Windows: WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE on the window's display affinity, set via SetWindowDisplayAffinity. Same effect on every conferencing and recording tool that uses the standard Windows capture pipeline (BitBlt, DXGI Desktop Duplication, Windows Graphics Capture).

The overlay also draws with click-through transparency (NSWindow.ignoresMouseEvents on macOS, WS_EX_TRANSPARENT on Windows), so cursor input goes through to the interview application underneath. The interviewer's mouse never “catches” on the overlay even if it somehow became visible.

What “undetectable” does not mean

No software is undetectable by every conceivable inspection method. PhantomCode is undetectable by the tools an interviewer or proctor actually uses during a live interview — screen sharing, screen recording, proctoring agents, and the visible process list. It is not designed to evade root-level forensic inspection by someone with full local administrative control of your machine, and that situation does not arise in a remote technical interview.

Verifying it yourself

The fastest way to confirm undetectability is to start a Zoom call with a friend (or join an empty Zoom meeting and record it locally), share your screen, and toggle PhantomCode on and off. The window appears on your physical display but is absent from the recording. PhantomCode also ships with a built-in “test undetectability” mode that walks you through this check during onboarding.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can interviewers see PhantomCode through Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams screen-share?
No. Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams all consume the same OS-level screen-capture API. PhantomCode opts out of that API at window-creation time, so the window is invisible to every video-conferencing app that uses the platform's standard capture path. The interviewer sees a clean desktop with PhantomCode's window absent — including any AI-generated answers it is rendering.
Does PhantomCode show up in screen recordings, OBS, or proctoring software like ProctorU and HackerRank's proctor?
It does not. Screen-recording tools (Loom, OBS, QuickTime, browser screen recorders) and remote-proctoring agents all rely on the same capture pipeline that PhantomCode is excluded from. The overlay is not captured to the recorded file or the proctor video stream.
Will PhantomCode appear in macOS Activity Monitor or Windows Task Manager?
PhantomCode runs as a stealth process: no Dock icon on macOS, no taskbar entry on Windows, and the process is hidden from the standard user-facing processes view. Power users with admin tools (sudo ps, Resource Monitor, third-party process inspectors) can still find any running process — but no remote interviewer or proctor has that level of access on your machine.
Can a remote-control session (TeamViewer, AnyDesk, Chrome Remote Desktop) see PhantomCode?
Most remote-desktop tools use the same screen-capture API as video conferencing and therefore cannot see PhantomCode either. A few low-level remote-administration tools that compose their own capture path may behave differently — if your interviewer is doing live remote-control of your machine, you would not be using PhantomCode anyway.
Is using PhantomCode against the rules of the interview?
Whether using AI assistance during a coding interview is permitted depends on the policy of the company and platform you are interviewing with. Many companies explicitly forbid third-party assistance during live coding rounds. PhantomCode provides the technical capability to run undetected, but the policy decision is yours to make — read the interview agreement and decide accordingly.

Try PhantomCode in your next mock interview

Install on macOS or Windows in under 2 minutes. Test undetectability in a Zoom recording with yourself before your real interview.

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