Google is rolling out new search gestures that allow iPhone users to highlight anything on their screen to quickly search for it. The Lens screen-searching feature is available on iOS in both the Google app and Chrome browser and provides a similar experience to Android’s Circle to Search, which isn’t supported on iPhones.
The new Lens gestures allow iPhone users to search for anything in the Google app or Chrome by drawing, highlighting, or tapping on it. The feature works across text, images, and videos, without having to take a screenshot or open a new tab. An obvious use case is finding shopping results based on images of products you like, but Lens can also define words and phrases; identify locations, plants, and animals; and perform almost any request that Google Search can.
The functionality is essentially the same as Circle to Search, though the Android version can be used across your entire phone instead of just the two Google apps. Not every Android device supports it, however, as it’s mostly limited to recent flagships.
To use the new Lens gestures, iPhone users need to open the three-dot menu within the Google or Chrome apps and select “Search Screen with Google Lens.” You can then use “any gesture that feels natural” to highlight what you want to search. Google says a new Lens icon for quickly accessing the feature will also be added to the address bar “in the coming months.”
AI Overviews are also expanding to more Lens search results, which means you’ll sometimes see AI-regurgitated summaries and URLs when using the image search tool. Google frustratingly doesn’t let you disable the AI Overviews feature. There are a few ways around it that help to avoid the wall of text that appears before your actual search results, but it’s unclear if these solutions will work with Lens.
