Google Lens has been part of Google Photos for a long time to help you search for images visually. On Android, Google Lens is now a more prominent part of Photos, identifying which images would benefit from the analysis and research tool.
Today, Lens is activated by opening a photo and selecting the appropriate icon in the bottom bar. It appears next to sharing, editing and deleting actions.
Google is now making Lens available in the information sheet that appears when swiping up an image. There is a new “Search within this photo” section below the date / time. Intelligently, this card only appears when Google detects that Lens would be useful, that is, if the image or screenshot includes text. As such, photos are analyzed quickly the moment you pull the sheet. This feature does not work initially to recognize monuments in our brief tests.
There is a small thumbnail with the prompt “Select text in image” and “Google Lens”. The four options are: Copy text, Search, Listen and Translate. Touching any will immediately start Lens in that mode.
Google Lens is very useful for optical character recognition (OCR) and saves a lot of time. However, most people are unaware that it is available, and today’s addition is a step towards increasing its prominence.
This expanded availability of Google Lens in Photos for Android is widely implemented (via Android Police) in the latest version (5.33) of the app. It’s still not showing up on the iOS client, which hasn’t been updated since December and doesn’t have a new tablet-optimized view.
More about Google Lens:
FTC: We use affiliate links for cars that generate revenue. Most.
Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news: