With the most recent Chrome update, it replaced the option to right click and reverse image search with "Search image with Google Lens". This is a really awful inconvenience for me, and I would like to know if there's any way to return it to the way it was before. I need to be able to reverse image search quickly for my job, and this is impeding my productivity.
Videos
I am trying to make the switch from Chrome to Firefox, and right away I notice how reliant I am on being able to right click an image and search google for it.
Anything I can do?
Hi guys, I just noticed that when I right-click on an image it doesn't offer me the option to search google for the image... just open in new tab, save image as, copy image, copy image address!
Is it one of my extensions? Is it a widespread problem?
Thanks!
If you change your default search engine in any way chrome disables reverse search. If you want to use international Google (.com) you should go to http://google.com/ncr
NCR means "no country redirect". When you visit http://google.com/ncr Google sends you a cookie. After that you usually use http://google.com when you search for anything with google (including the context menu / right-click menu).
I recommend deleting your cookies and cache before you visit http://google.com/ncr. Sometimes it'll conflict with other cookies / settings you made on the google website (safesearch and so on). And don't forget to reset the search engine before you do all this.
I did change my search engine, from my original one (Google in my country's language):
{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:bookmarkBarPinned}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}{google:omniboxStartMarginParameter}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}to this:
http://www.google.com/search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%sShould I change someone in my new one? Like adding all the stuff in curly braces?
So I did a clean install of Windows 11 and now the right-click "Search Google for this image" option is just… gone.
I'm not sure if the right-click option is using Google Lens or not, but if it is, why get rid of the old one?
I guess it’s to push people into using the Google Lens nonsense instead? Are they really that desperate to boost Lens usage stats or something? It’s literally the same thing as dragging the image into a new Google Images tab, except now it’s clunkier and slower for no reason.
Seriously, who asked for this? The old one worked absolutely perfectly. Stop fixing stuff that isn’t broken, plz.
It's very helpful to translate foreign words in images. I tried incognito mode, didn't work. I also tried disabling and enabling every "lens" flag in chrome://flags.
EDT: For future googlers, I had to completely reset chromes flags and settings, then re-sign-in to fix it.
Is there any way to fix this? I'm not sure when this change took effect, but I cant find any commentary on it. Thanks!
disabling lens flags does not fix it and the extensions I previously used no longer work, so, anybody got any ideas? : /
It will now show an error saying something went wrong and it was fully removed on February 7, 2025. You can't not enable it again with Search by Image or Legacy Image Search. You can't get it back you will still have to use Google Lens.
I get this when I click "All sizes" under the "Find other sizes of this image" option
https://imgur.com/7wKsZF6
Make sure your post is flaired properly or it will be removed, support posts need to be flaired with "HELP" or will be removed. There are also new user flairs to add your main browser next to your username.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
I can second that.. happened several of times in the last 2 - 3 days
I'll go into more depth here:
Previously when you image searched. It did bring up the terrible google lens, but when you click the "find image source" button if would pull up the correct and better searched results on a new full screened page.
Now not only does it not do this(you can still full screen it but my problem is with the search results). It gives you worse search results. It also doesn't give visual matches on the sidebar anymore. It's just links.
This is what the new current search is like:
https://imgur.com/a/im62opE
As you can see. When I click find image source it just gives me shitty IMDB results.
This is what it should give you. But you can only get to this by disabling the lens flags:
https://imgur.com/a/UF3Kinm
And 1-2 days ago, this is what it gave you, which is my preferred method. You got the benefits of google lens if you wanted it, but also when you hit find image source it would look like this. I want this back. It let me translate images real quick if need be, but also gave excellent image search capabilities with one button. Now I have to relaunch chrome by switch flags back and forth.
https://imgur.com/a/ZGXE4Nr
*I just took this killing joke movie/comic whatever it is, as an example.
Google just forced desktop users to switch over to their stupid mobile app Lens in the right-click context menu, after the same release came with a UAF vulnerability in V8 for 2.5 billion devices.
Lens is trash. I just wanted to test it out, so I used Image Search and Lens on the same image, and Lens came back with "No results found for the selected area" and Image Search came back with "About 294 results (1,06 seconds)".
Is that the "new machine learning and AI capabilities" they're trying to get over people with?
There's no excuse. Just another example of how out-of-touch and half-baked the chrome devs are, they take a year to roll out broken software and deactivate what worked.
How long until they deactivate "chrome://flags/#enable-lens-region-search" like all the other chrome flag fixes? Knowing Google they're probably going to deactivate Image Search instead to eliminate competition with a better product.
I use that feature a lot, but now for some reason when I right-click on an image it won't let me reverse search the image over Google.
I used to be able to and it's gone, any advice on getting it back?