Lens will now work seamlessly in the Chrome browser’s Side Panel, according to the company. The Side Panel is a right-hand pop-out menu that includes a Reading List and Bookmarks and allows users to quickly access both while avoiding the top browser bar.
While this is the desktop version of the app baked directly into Chrome, accessing it this way will result in a more mobile-like UI that is entirely constrained to the small area shown in the GIF above. That being said, it is intended to be more efficient and to divide user’s attention less, so I support it.
Google Lens is a powerful image recognition software developed by Google for Android that uses computer vision and machine learning to find similar images across the web. As many users are aware from our previous coverage, it is now available on Chrome for desktop. Previously, right-clicking any image on the user’s computer and selecting the newly added ‘Search image with Google Lens’ option would open the tool in a new browser tab.
To reiterate, Lens isn’t just for image search. It also translates text found in images from one language to another and allows users to copy and paste text from real-world images. Essentially, the Side Panel is evolving into a beast of a helper for day-to-day tasks. My only concern is that Google will overburden it and it will become a bloated mess.