iPhone or Android? Possibly the toughest of tech choices boils down to so much more than whether you are just an Apple fan or not. Both tech giants have brought their own magic to the market, which often ends up being exclusive to their respective operating systems and the smartphones that use them. Sometimes, however, Apple and Google come up with apps and features they think are so good that everybody should be able to use them. This now appears to be the case for Google with its Google Lens app.
More about Google Lens
Read nowGoogle Lens can now be accessed from the Google app on iOS
If you are unfamiliar with Google Lens, you will likely be impressed by its capabilities. Lens allows you to point your smartphone camera at objects in the real world to try and find out information about what they are. It uses Google’s famous AI to scan what your phone is looking at and then serve up the relevant information. This is a key part of Google’s strategy of moving towards a future that contains so much more than mere text-based search queries.
You’ve always wanted to know what type of 🐶 that is. With Google Lens in the Google app on iOS, now you can → https://t.co/xGQysOoSug pic.twitter.com/JG4ydIo1h3
— Google (@Google) December 10, 2018
If you are an iOS user and you want to try out Google Lens for yourself, read on. All you have to do is open up the Google app on your iOS device and look for the new Lens icon. You should see it next to the microphone icon in the Google search bar. If you tap the Lens icon, your phone’s camera will switch on and you’ll see a number of moving bars, which indicate that Google’s AI is working away in the background. You’ll be able to use Google Lens to identify most things that you point your camera at including bars and restaurants, and more natural things like plants and animals. It also works very well as a quick and efficient way of copy and pasting analog text.
Until now, iOS users were only able to use Google Lens’ capability by scanning photos in the iOS version of the Google Photos app. The move to the Google app, and the introduction of a live scanning feature makes the whole process much more fluid and easier to pull off. iOS users can now simply tap on an object they are looking at through their phone, rather than having to first take a photo.
The Lens update to the Google app has been rolling out slowly over the last few weeks. If you still haven’t received it on your iOS device, don’t worry: it is on its way.
