How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Home
In your own home you have something no hotel guest has: you know what belongs there. That is the strongest detection tool on this page.
Your own home is a different problem
Searching a hotel room is a stranger-risk problem: someone you will never meet may have installed something, and you can leave. Searching your own house is not that. If a camera is in your bedroom, whoever put it there almost certainly had a key — a partner or ex-partner, a housemate, a landlord, a family member, a contractor, a cleaner, or a guest who was alone in the room for ten minutes.
That changes the practical advice in three ways. You have unlimited time, so you can be thorough rather than fast. You know what belongs in the room, which is the single most powerful detection tool available and one no visitor to a hotel has. And you may need to be discreet, because if the person who installed it lives with you or has access, a visible search can escalate the situation before you have evidence. If that describes your circumstances, read the last section of this page first.
Start with the inventory advantage
Before you scan anything, walk each room and ask one question of every object: do I know where this came from? You furnished this house. You can account for almost everything in it. Anything you cannot place — a phone charger nobody owns, a decorative object that appeared, a smoke detector that looks different from the others, a gift, an air freshener you did not buy — goes on a shortlist immediately.
Then ask the second question: has anything moved or been opened? A picture hanging slightly differently, a vent cover with fresh screw marks, a smoke detector with dust disturbed around it, a socket faceplate that is no longer flush. In a space you see every day, these anomalies are visible to you and invisible to everyone else.
Rooms in priority order
- The bedroom. Scan from the bed outward. The wall opposite the bed, the bedside table, any charger or clock, the ceiling above and any smoke detector on a wall rather than a ceiling. This is the room devices are placed in most often.
- The bathroom. The vent, anything plugged in, shelf items, the mirror and its frame. See the bathroom guide.
- The main living area. Usually the room a legitimate home security camera would be in, so this is where disclosure matters more than detection. Check that any camera present is one you know about.
- Entry points and hallways. Where someone monitoring comings and goings would place a device rather than someone monitoring you personally.
- Home office or study. If the concern is information rather than intrusion, this is where a camera or a listening device pays off.
The network scan is far more useful at home
This is where the Wi-Fi scanner genuinely earns its place. In a hotel, guest isolation hides everything and an unknown device tells you nothing. On your own network you should be able to name every single device connected to it. Run the scan and account for each entry: your phones, laptops, TV, console, printer, thermostat, speakers, any smart bulbs. Anything left over after that is a serious finding, not an ambiguous one.
Two things to check alongside it. Log into your router's admin page and look at the connected device list there too, since it sees things your phone may not, and check whether any port forwarding rules exist that you did not create — a camera streaming out of the house often needs one. Also check for a second wireless network broadcasting from inside your house that is not yours.
Then run the Bluetooth scan in each room, the lens scan in dim light over your shortlist, the infrared check at night in the bedroom, and the magnetic detector on the specific objects you could not account for.
If you live with the person you suspect
Detection advice stops being the important part here, and safety advice starts. Do not confront anyone, do not remove a device you find, and do not announce that you have been searching. A removed camera tells the person you know and removes your evidence at the same time.
Photograph anything you find in place. Preserve it. Contact the police, and if the situation involves a partner or ex-partner, contact a domestic abuse support service — they deal with surveillance in relationships routinely and can advise on timing and safety planning in a way a detection guide cannot. Consider that the surveillance may also be on your phone rather than in your house; our guide to phone tracking and stalkerware covers checking that, and it is often the more likely route.