Open-source iPhone app Malibu pairs with Snapchat Spectacles 2 and imports videos locally

A developer has released Malibu, an open-source iPhone app that pairs directly with Snapchat Spectacles 2 and imports their videos without a Snapchat account or any cloud service. The project is documented in a post on dev.to by Cynostial, who reverse engineered the glasses' wireless protocol after finding that the hardware still worked but the original software had made the device difficult to use.

Probing the glasses

According to the post, the effort started as a packet-probing exercise rather than an app project. The glasses' Bluetooth advertisements expose a pairing marker, and inspecting the GATT services revealed a BLE service with UART-like characteristics. From there, packet captures revealed the command framing — and the fact that the protocol was more than a simple set of Bluetooth commands. An entire pairing and authentication protocol runs underneath.

By comparing the old client with packet captures, the developer determined that Spectacles 2 use protobuf messages for commands and media metadata. The pairing process involves an X25519 key exchange, a proof exchange, and an AES-GCM encrypted session. Identifying the cryptography was only part of the problem: as the post explains, nonce ordering, message layout, key inputs and byte ordering all had to match what the glasses expected exactly. The protocol was reproduced in Python first so it could be tested independently before being reimplemented inside an iPhone app.

Two radios, two jobs

Spectacles 2 do not send video over Bluetooth. BLE is reserved for discovery, pairing, authentication, controlling the glasses and starting their Wi-Fi network. For the actual transfer, the glasses create their own private Wi-Fi access point; the iPhone joins that network and talks to a media service running on the glasses, from which Malibu retrieves the media catalogue, thumbnails and MP4 data. Everything happens locally — there is no intermediate server and no account requirement.

Built like a native iOS app

Making the protocol pleasant to use mattered as much as decoding it. Rather than forcing users through manual trips to the Settings app, Malibu uses Apple's AccessorySetupKit on modern iOS to authorize the Spectacles as a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi accessory. After the first pairing, the app can authenticate with the glasses, ask them to start their saved private network, join it and begin importing videos automatically.

The app also handles interrupted transfers: if a connection drops mid-download, it establishes a new encrypted media session and resumes the partial transfer instead of restarting the video. Imported clips can be stored inside Malibu, accessed through the Files app, or copied into Photos.

Experimental, and looking for testers

The project is still experimental. Cynostial has verified it against a single 2018 Spectacles 2 Sapphire unit and is asking owners of other Spectacles 2 models or firmware versions to test it. The repository documents the reverse-engineered protocol — message framing, the pairing flow, cryptographic derivation, the media protocol, and the parts that remain unclear — and contributions are invited.

Why it matters

Spectacles 2 are a case study in hardware outliving its software: the camera, Bluetooth radio, Wi-Fi radio and storage all still function, but the device is only usable again because someone mapped out how to talk to it. Malibu shows that community reverse engineering can restore function to abandoned products even when the original vendor's ecosystem is the bottleneck.

The work is also a practical reference for anyone attempting something similar. The write-up covers a realistic BLE-plus-Wi-Fi accessory architecture, a non-trivial crypto handshake that had to be implemented byte-for-byte, and a modern iOS integration through AccessorySetupKit — a combination that few public examples document in comparable detail. Whether Malibu remains a one-person experiment or grows into a maintained client, the published protocol lowers the barrier for anyone else who wants to keep old hardware out of a drawer.