On Windows, there’s an API call named SetWindowDisplayAffinity. When a desktop application makes this call with the right flags, the OS excludes that application’s window from screen capture at the kernel level. The window still exists on your screen. It just doesn’t appear in any screen share or recording. Zoom doesn’t see it. OBS doesn’t see it. The interviewer’s recording software doesn’t see it.
Browser extensions can’t make this call. They don’t have OS-level access. They run inside Chrome’s security sandbox, which is by design, Chrome deliberately limits what extensions can do to protect users from malicious extensions doing things like, say, hiding themselves from screen capture. That same protection is why browser-based AI interview tools can’t have real stealth mode. It’s not an oversight. It’s architecture.
What audio access actually looks like at each layer
This is the part most comparison articles skip, so I want to be specific.
A browser extension can access audio from the browser tab it’s running in. If the interview is happening in a Chrome tab, a web-based interview platform, a Zoom web client, a Google Meet session in the browser, the extension hears that audio. If any part of the interview is happening in a native application (Zoom’s desktop client, Teams, Webex), the extension doesn’t hear it. It’s tab-constrained by the same sandbox that prevents it from hiding from screen share.
A desktop application accesses system-level audio. It captures everything your sound card receives, regardless of which application produced it. Zoom, Teams, a web platform, a phone call through your laptop’s speakers, all of it. The desktop app doesn’t care about the application boundary because it’s operating below that boundary, at the OS audio layer.
For practical interview purposes: if you’re using the native Zoom client (which most corporate interviews run through), a browser extension might miss pieces of the interviewer’s audio. A desktop app won’t.
The latency difference and whether it actually matters
Desktop apps have a latency advantage of roughly 1.5 to 3 seconds compared to browser extensions in testing. That sounds small. In a live interview where you’re expected to respond within a normal conversational pause (3-5 seconds), a 3-second lag in the tool means you’ve already started talking or already started to look like you’re thinking too hard.
The reason for the gap: Chrome sandboxes extensions and limits their CPU and memory usage. A complex model inference call that takes 800 milliseconds on a desktop app might take 2,200 milliseconds in Chrome’s restricted environment, depending on the system and what else is running. On a laptop with 8GB RAM that’s also running Teams, Chrome, Slack, and a code editor, that gap widens.
I’ll admit I don’t have rigorous benchmarks for this across all hardware configurations. The gap is real. The exact size of the gap depends on your machine.
Detection risk: what interview platforms actually do
Some proctored platforms scan for AI-related browser extensions. The method is straightforward: the interview platform’s JavaScript inspects the browser’s DOM for elements that AI extensions inject, or uses the WebExtensions API to query installed extensions. Several extensions in this category have been specifically fingerprinted by HackerRank and similar platforms, which maintain an informal list of extensions to detect.
Desktop apps are outside the browser’s visibility. The interview platform’s JavaScript can’t see them. They don’t inject DOM elements. They don’t appear in extension lists. The only thing that would reveal a desktop app’s presence is screen sharing, and for apps that use SetWindowDisplayAffinity on Windows or the equivalent on macOS, that’s handled at the OS level before the screen share stream is constructed.
This is not a theoretical concern. TechCrunch coverage of AI in hiring from 2025 documented several cases where candidates were flagged mid-interview by platform detection software. All the documented cases involved browser extensions, not desktop apps. That pattern might change as desktop tools become more common, but it’s the current state.
When browser extensions still make sense
For interviews that happen entirely in a browser-based platform, with no proctoring, and where stealth mode isn’t a concern, a browser extension is fine. The setup is simpler. You don’t install anything outside the browser. If you’re a non-technical candidate doing a recruiter screen over Zoom’s web client, a browser extension will pick up the audio correctly and the overhead of a desktop app setup may not be worth it.
The trade-off calculus: browser extensions are easier to install and fine for casual use. Desktop apps are more capable and necessary for anything involving proctoring, screen sharing, native clients, or system-level audio.
The BLS 2024 Occupational Outlook data shows the largest job growth concentrations in technology, finance, and healthcare, industries that tend to run structured interview processes with proctored rounds. For those categories, the architecture difference between desktop and browser isn’t a preference, it’s a functional requirement.
The installation question
Craqly’s desktop app installs in about 2 minutes on both Windows and macOS. Most of the tools in this category install in comparable time. If “I don’t want to install a desktop app” is the objection, it’s a light one given what you get in exchange.
The objection that actually makes sense: some enterprise-managed laptops won’t let you install unapproved software. If you’re interviewing from a corporate machine you don’t control, a browser extension might be your only option. That’s a real constraint worth knowing about before you pick a tool.
Architecture determines capability. Browser extensions are capped by the sandbox. Desktop apps aren’t. For most serious interview loops in technical fields, that gap matters more than the setup difference between them.