How Proctorio Blocks Cluely: Stopping AI Cheating Tools Like Cluely in Online Exams

When Cluely first launched, its manifesto explicitly encouraged users to cheat on exams. The app worked by invisibly overlaying itself on platforms like Canvas, reading on-screen content in real time and providing answers. Its tagline used to boast: "Cluely kills all quizzes, exams, and tests."

Since then, Cluely has cleaned up its marketing. References to exam cheating are gone, replaced with "cheat on everything else." Yet if you search for "how to use Cluely to cheat on an exam," you’ll find the truth; the app still works the same way.

Cluely has grown in popularity, praised in test-cheating forums and discord servers, thanks to how well it hides itself. It uses system-level shortcuts and overlays that do not appear to traditional screen-sharing tools. Even browser lockers and webcam monitoring tools fail to detect it.

But Proctorio does.

Proctorio blocks tools like Cluely by preventing unauthorized apps from launching during exams. If Cluely can’t start, it can’t be used. Proctorio’s security settings were designed to catch exactly this kind of tool, whether it openly markets itself for cheating or tries to pretend otherwise.

You’ll find plenty of blog posts asking, "How do I bypass Proctorio??" Fewer explain why that’s becoming nearly impossible. Long before Cluely existed, Proctorio was already built to stop tools just like it.

Don’t take our word for it, watch Cluely get blocked and flagged in real time:

Cluely may have dropped the word "exam" from its cheating manifesto, but that hasn’t changed what it does, or why students are using it. Choose an exam security platform that’s already one step ahead: Proctorio.