Developing a step further, Google Lens for desktop Chrome is now adding the ability to search part of the page instead of just full images. For anyone familiar with Lens, it normally allows you to drag a frame over a webpage or image on Android and then uses AI and machine learning to search for relevant products, images, results, and more. This rectangle draw space can then be adjusted in order to modify your search query.
Just a few weeks ago, we discussed how Lens appeared in the Chome Labs experiments section at the top of the browser via a developer flag. While it isn’t immediately obvious how one would activate it, right-clicking would reveal the tool as a part of the operating system’s context menu as ‘Search image with Google Lens’. Now, the menu uption reads ‘Search part of the page with Google Lens’ and once clicked, the page will darken, letting you drag an area over any part of the web page with your mouse.
Once you release your mouse, you’re immediately redirected to the same Google Lens for Desktop page we discussed previously. On the left is your highlight of the page, and on the right, your results. Again, you can drag to readjust your selection on the left to change your results – just like you would on Android.
Search your screen with Google Lens
Right click and select “Search part of the page with Google Lens” to search any region of the site to learn more about the visual content you see while you browse and shop on the web. – Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS
#enable-lens-region-search
The Chrome development team is calling this ‘Lens region search’, and it can be toggled on via chrome://flags as you can see above. This makes Lens for Desktop more powerful and much more useful than just right-clicking and searching via a full image. Being able to target a more specific region of a page is awesome, and with this update, you can search more than just images – text, videos, and more will now be able to be visually searched for with a single action.
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