Is HackerRank Proctored? What It Actually Records

What HackerRank can see at all

• Every copy and every paste, including the text that was pasted
• How often and how long you leave the test window
• Whether you exit full-screen mode
• How many monitors are connected, throughout the test
• Periodic screenshots of your system, when Proctor Mode is on
• Webcam images, when the test collects them
• Similarity between your submission and other candidates' code

Three modes, and the employer picks

HackerRank does not have a single proctoring switch. Its Test Integrity page lists three modes that stack: Secure Mode runs the test in a controlled browser environment; Proctor Mode adds AI screenshot analysis, plagiarism detection and webcam anomaly detection on top of it; and HackerRank Desktop App Mode adds operating-system-level monitoring on top of that, with the candidate installing a native application.

The practical consequence is that "is HackerRank proctored" has no general answer. The same platform can be a plain browser tab with a paste counter, or a locked-down native app that closes other programs. You find out which one you have during the onboarding flow, because each mode asks for different permissions before the timer starts.

What Proctor Mode captures once it is running

Proctor Mode's onboarding checks your operating system and browser, has you acknowledge a list of prohibited actions, and then asks for webcam access, a single-monitor check and screen-sharing access. HackerRank's page states plainly that the system prompts candidates to share their entire screen.

From then on, screenshots are taken every 15 seconds. When something looks off — window switching, a full-screen exit — the interval tightens to five seconds so the report has context around the event. Where the test collects personal information, webcam images are captured every five seconds and displayed on a synchronised timeline next to the screenshots.

The screenshots are not just stored, they are read. HackerRank describes a model that looks for tutorial websites, answer-sharing platforms, GitHub repositories hosting leaked solutions, and external AI coding assistants that are not part of HackerRank's own IDE.

Desktop App Mode is a different kind of thing entirely

Everything above is a web page asking a browser for permissions. Desktop App Mode is not. Candidates download a lightweight HackerRank application for Windows or macOS, grant it system permissions, and close other applications before the test — manually, or with a Force Close All Apps button.

During the test HackerRank says the application detects and closes other programs the candidate tries to open, prevents screen sharing and screenshots, blocks remote access sharing, refuses to run on a virtual machine, and checks continuously for additional monitors and screen mirroring. Its documentation names specific tools it blocks, including Cluely and Ultracode.

This is the honest headline for anyone weighing up assistive software: a native lockdown application is a completely different threat model from a browser reading a video frame, and it is a mode HackerRank documents and ships.

What is recorded, and what is only flagged

An artefact a reviewer can open later is a different thing from an event counted on a report, and both are different from an action the platform simply prevents. Every control HackerRank documents, tagged and sourced:

What HackerRank's documentation does not say

The gaps are as useful as the features, and they are the part nobody else writes down. Where HackerRank states a limit, it is quoted below. Where it is silent, the entry says it is silent — undocumented is not the same as absent, and we are not going to present it as one.

• Secure Mode is browser-level. HackerRank's Secure Mode page describes full-screen enforcement, copy/paste blocking, monitor counting and tab alerts — it does not describe inspecting the operating system or the applications running on it.
• None of HackerRank's integrity pages describe recording microphone audio. Webcam, screenshots and screen activity are named; a microphone is not.
• Proctor Mode is an AI add-on and Desktop App Mode sits on top of it, so neither is present unless the employer has bought and enabled them.
• Proctor Mode cannot be enabled on tests created before HackerRank's July 2025 release, and once candidates have started a published test it cannot be switched off.
• HackerRank's proctoring documentation covers tests run through HackerRank for Work. It does not describe proctoring on the public practice site.

What candidates get wrong about HackerRank

The most common mistake is assuming a HackerRank link means a webcam. It usually does not. Copy/paste tracking and tab proctoring are the only things on by default, and both produce numbers on a report rather than pictures. If the employer bought no add-on, nothing is watching you.

The second is treating a tab switch as a verdict. Tab proctoring produces two columns — Out of Window Duration and Number of Window Exits — and HackerRank's own guidance frames integrity signals as evidence for a human to review, not an automatic fail. Reading documentation in another tab looks identical to reading an answer in another tab, and a recruiter has to decide which it was.

The third is the opposite error: assuming that because the test looks like an ordinary web page, nothing beyond the tab is visible. In Proctor Mode it is a full-screen share with a model reading the frames, and the screenshots are described as screenshots of the candidate's system.

Worth knowing before you sit down

• Proctor Mode assigns a final integrity result of High or Medium — there is no clean 'pass' state once it has flagged something.
• Enabling Proctor Mode turns on AI Plagiarism Detection and Image Analysis by default. Image Analysis can be disabled by the employer; HackerRank recommends against it.
• The multiple-monitor check runs continuously, not just at the start. Connecting a second display mid-test is flagged.
• Copy/paste tracking applies to Coding, Subjective and Sentence Completion questions, and the pasted text itself is readable in the report's Timeline view.
• In Desktop App Mode a screenshot you manage to take comes out blank, per HackerRank's own description of the feature.

What this means if you use an AI assistant

A full-desktop screen share is the honest failure mode for any overlay tool, on any platform. When a page captures your entire screen it is capturing a composited image of the desktop, and what does or does not land in that image is decided by the operating system's window compositor, not by the assessment platform. Vendors do not publish how their capture pipeline treats windows that opt out of it, and neither does anyone else — which is exactly why we will not tell you how it resolves.

Sharing one window instead of the whole screen is a different case again, but it is not usually a candidate's decision. HackerRank's Proctor Mode documentation says the system prompts candidates to share their entire screen, so the share target is set by the test, not by you.

Desktop App Mode removes the question altogether. It is a native process with system permissions whose documented job is to find and close other applications, and HackerRank's page names specific tools by name. No screen-capture behaviour is relevant to a check like that. Which tools any given build of that application recognises is knowable only to HackerRank — the absence of a name from a support article is not evidence of anything, in either direction, and we are not going to read it as such about our own product or anyone else's.

Two of HackerRank's signals never look at your screen at all. Gaze detection watches your eyes for a look-away-then-type rhythm, and conversation detection watches for text typed and deleted in the editor. Both are inferences about behaviour, and they are indifferent to what software produced it.

Stealth Interview is a desktop application for macOS and Windows that is not captured by screen-sharing or meeting software, reads the problem from a screenshot, and returns a solution with complexity analysis. That is what our product does. What a given HackerRank test does is set out above, from HackerRank's pages, and the two sets of facts are for you to weigh.

HackerRank proctoring: common questions

Sources

Every page below is published by HackerRank or its parent company. Last checked in August 2026; vendors change these features often, so check the date on the page you land on.

• HackerRank — Test Integrity
• HackerRank — Secure Mode
• HackerRank — Proctor Mode
• HackerRank — Review Integrity Issues in Proctor Mode
• HackerRank — Image Proctoring and Image Analysis
• HackerRank — Desktop App Mode

Product home: HackerRank

Other platforms you may be facing

• Every platform in this cluster — assessments, live coding tools and meeting software, side by side.
• The blog — how the technical interview loop is actually scored.
• AI interview assistant — what Stealth Interview does during a live interview.