What you need to know
- A new update is coming to Google Lens in Chrome that will make it easier to keep track of what you're searching.
- When using Lens, the necessary results will appear in a pop-out sidebar.
- Previously, a new tab would open when searching with Google Lens in Chrome.
Over the past few months, Google has been making quite a few changes to how Google Lens works on your computer. And now, another big change is on the way, aiming to keep you from getting distracted when going through Lens results.
Until now, whenever you performed a search using Google Lens, Chrome would open a new tab that displayed the results. For obvious reasons, that hasn't been the most productive method, and Google is now changing things up. With this latest update, Lens will now open the search results in a pop-out sidebar, keeping you in the same tab the entire time.
Google states that this change "is part of our broader effort to help people search and access information in more natural and intuitive ways." For obvious reasons, loading Lens results in another tab could end up with you going down a rabbit hole without remembering what it was you were searching for, to begin with.
The side panel will provide the same results, including a "find image source" button above the picture in question. The rest of the results will appear in a list below, with toggles for "Search," "Text," and "Translate." And no matter what it is that you're researching, you can handle everything you need to, without ever jumping into another tab or window.
This new feature change builds on an update that began rolling out with Chrome 100 for the best Chromebooks, Windows, and macOS computers. That update brought some of the best Google Lens features from mobile to the desktop, as you could finally make use of the aforementioned search buttons.
Perhaps the best part about this update is that Google says it's starting to roll out today, and should be available for everyone in the near future. If you're tired of your productivity suffering because of multiple tabs and windows, Chrome's next update will help out with that.
