AI Overlay for Inspera Exam Portal on Mac
Inspera is the assessment platform used across Norway, the Netherlands, the UK, and increasingly Spanish universities for high-stakes finals. Most Inspera exams run inside Safe Exam Browser (SEB) configured to point at the institution's Inspera portal.
Inspera ships a desktop "Inspera Exam Portal" wrapper for Mac plus configurable proctoring through partners (Examity, ProctorExam, IRIS Connect). The wrapper is a Chromium-based shell that disables app switching and copies SEB's session-level lockdown. Crucially, all of these surfaces use Apple's standard screen-capture APIs, every one of which respects per-window exclusion. LDBypass sets that flag, so even when SEB blocks Cmd-Tab or screenshots, the overlay window simply does not appear in any frame the proctor receives.
Key points
- Inspera Exam Portal on Mac requires macOS 12.0+ and runs as a regular user-space app, not a kernel extension.
- Most Inspera deployments pair with SEB; SEB does not patch the kernel and cannot intercept windows it never gets handles to.
- Live human proctoring is delivered by a partner (Examity, ProctorExam) over WebRTC; the overlay is hidden from those streams too.
- Inspera does not operate at the system level on macOS, so there is no LSM-style hook that would see windows the OS has marked private.
How it works
┌── macOS host ─────────────────────────────────┐ │ ┌── proctor desktop app ───────┐ │ │ │ Calls ScreenCaptureKit / │ ← misses │ │ │ CGWindowListCreateImage │ flagged │ │ └──────────────────────────────┘ windows │ │ │ │ ┌── LDBypass overlay window ───┐ │ │ │ sharingType = .none │ ← invisible │ │ └──────────────────────────────┘ to capture│ └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Compatibility on Mac
| macOS 14 Sonoma+ | Yes (required for window-privacy API) | ✓ |
| Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) | Native arm64 build | ✓ |
| Intel Macs (2019+) | Universal binary supported | ✓ |
| Inspera Exam Portal (Mac) | macOS 12+ wrapper, Chromium-based | ✓ |
| SEB-based Inspera exams | SEB cannot see flagged windows | ✓ |
Common questions
Does Inspera Exam Portal block keyboard shortcuts?
It blocks Cmd-Tab, Cmd-Q on the exam window, and screenshot hotkeys. LDBypass uses a global Carbon hot-key (Ctrl-Cmd-L) that survives these blocks because it registers below the application layer.
Will my Inspera exam be invalidated for using an overlay?
The overlay is invisible to the recording, but using AI for graded work is a policy violation at most institutions. We do not advise using it for graded assessments where AI is forbidden.
Do I need to install anything besides LDBypass?
No. LDBypass is self-contained. Install Inspera Exam Portal as your university directs, then launch LDBypass separately and toggle with Ctrl-Cmd-L.