Search with Google Lens in Chrome’s side panel without needing to leave the tab you’re on

Google Lens is an extremely powerful image recognition software that Google has created for Android and uses computer vision and machine learning in order to find similar images across the web. It’s now available on Chrome for desktop as many of you are aware based on our past coverage. However, up until now, right-clicking any image on your computer and selecting the newly added ‘Search image with Google Lens’ option would pop the tool out into another browser tab.

Now, the company has revealed that Lens will now work seamlessly in the Side Panel of the Chrome browser. The Side Panel is a right-hand pop-out menu that features Reading List and Bookmarks and provides quick and easy access both while letting you avoid the top browser bar.

While this is the desktop version of the app baked directly into Chrome, accessing it this way will show you a more mobile-like UI and it’s constrained entirely to the small area seen in the GIF above. With that being said, it’s meant to be more efficient and split your focus less, so I’m in favor of it.

As a reminder, Lens isn’t just for image search. It also translates text found in images from one language to another and lets you copy and paste text from images taken in the real world. Basically, the Side Panel is becoming a beast of a helper during day-to-day tasks. My only concern is that Google will stuff it with too many things, and it will become a bloated mess.