Google’s ‘Smart Screenshots’ could allow users to search with screenshots

Google Lens has been quite a powerful search tool to read barcodes, QR codes, translate text on-the-fly, do optical character recognition (OCR) and even search for similar-looking products. Based on some digging, the company could be combining Lens with the ‘Edit & Share screenshots’ menu to allow searching with screenshots using Lens.

A feature called ‘Smart Screenshots’ was discovered by 9To5Google in the latest version of the Google app (10.61) after examining the code. It combines the features of Google Lens and editing screenshots in a new toolbar. After you take a screenshot, the toolbar will display the regular edit, share and your favourite app to share the image. Additionally, the Lens icon appears in the toolbar to enable this feature.

According to the report, after a screenshot is taken, Smart Screenshots will be able to easily call Lens to take advantage of Search whether it’s for OCR or finding visually-similar items. However, the feature isn’t live yet. There’s no official mention anywhere and it’s also unclear how exactly it’s going to be implemented.

The introduction of Smart Screenshots will continue to prove the potential and flexibility of Lens. We aren’t sure whether this is going to be a system-wide feature or only while using the Google app.