You can now search using Google Lens in the Chromebook Gallery app

A while back, we covered some new features that we thought were coming to Chromebooks in general. Google Lens in Gallery app. At least since May, we’ve known this tool was coming, but we didn’t know exactly how it would play out.

And last month, users gained access to a new built-in Google Lens feature across the Chrome browser, giving users access to nearly everything they find in any open Chrome tab. If you haven’t tried it yet, you can access its features by clicking the URL bar or the three-dot overflow menu. It’s quite sweet.

A new way to use Google Lens on your Chromebook

However, this new feature is exclusive to Chromebooks and works directly in the Gallery app. And now that Google has it up and running, you can understand why Google Lens’ other integrations needed to be introduced in the first place.

To try it out on ChromeOS 129 (current stable build), double-click the file in the Files app to open it in the Gallery app. When you open it, you’ll see the gallery (you can also launch the gallery directly from the launcher). No matter what type of file it is, as long as it can be viewed in the Gallery app, it doesn’t matter. For reference, the operation image below uses PDF.

All you have to do is press the new Google Lens button at the top and drag your cursor to capture anything on the page you want to search with Google Lens. It works very similar to the Chrome-based tool described earlier in this post.

The important thing is that when you select it and click on it, Search with Google Lens When you press the button, a new Chrome tab immediately opens with the cropped image and opens the new Chrome Google Lens feature. So what’s happening here is more of a shortcut for finding screenshots in Chrome’s Google Lens implementation than a new feature built in from the beginning.

Technically speaking, you can use the screen capture tool to grab the same image, drag it to a new Chrome tab, and invoke Google Lens to achieve the same result. Implementing this new Lens in the Gallery app obviously saves a few steps, but it’s not an additional version of Google Lens on Chromebooks.

To be honest, this is a bit of simple genius. Why rebuild a tool when you can create shortcuts and use them elsewhere? All of this makes me feel like Chromebooks should integrate the same lens into their screen capture tools. You can also open a Chrome-based feature similar to the gallery implementation, but simply[画面キャプチャ]It can only be accessed from the menu.

The more places Google can show Lens, the better. This is a very impressive and capable way to search for anything you can think of. The easier it is for users to access, the more often they will be reminded that this powerful tool exists throughout the operating system. And it’s a win all around.