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How to get the “view image” button back on Google Image Search

How to get the “view image” button back on Google Image Search
Ben Bowman

Ben Bowman

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Google Image Search is great. But a recent tweak made it much harder to get the images you’re looking for. In an effort to calm photographers and publishers who were tired of having their images stolen, Google killed off their “view image” button.

Now when you do a search for an image, you’ll only see an option to visit the page. And if you want to comb through the source code to find the image and get the URL, you’ve got that option. Let’s just say that’s less than ideal.

But there are a lot of reasons why you might not want to visit a specific page for an image. If the page has a ton of other content, it can be difficult to find the picture you’re looking for. Or maybe the site itself has some nasty pop-ups or other features you don’t want. (God help you if you’re at work, trying to get an image of tacos and Google dumps you on a restaurant page that’s blaring mariachi music while your boss stands a few feet away.)

Good news: you can get the “view image” button back!

How to get the “view image” button back on Google Image Search

If you use Chrome, you can download this add-on to restore the feature.

If you use Firefox, you can try this add-on or this one.

This is the part of our article where we remind you that you should never download or share an image without getting permission from the copyright holder. That said, you can probably find some images that are free to use. In your Google Image Search, click Tools and then look under Usage rights to narrow your search parameters. Look: we even found some taco pictures that are explicitly labeled for reuse! (And our boss is none the wiser…)

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Ben Bowman

Ben Bowman

Ben Bowman is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who led Softonic.com's editorial team in 2018 and 2019. Before joining Softonic, he was the Head of Content for Curiosity.com and a news producer for NBC, Fox, and CBS. He is an award-winning filmmaker and director of sketch and improv comedy, and a contributing writer for the Pitch comedy app.

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