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At last you can try Google Lens on your phone!

At last you can try Google Lens on your phone!
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Google Lens can translate foreign menus and recognise landmarks, just by looking at your photos. So, what are you waiting for? Ditch your tour guides, and read on for details.

How do you get Google Lens on your phone?


Until recently, the AI-powered visual recognition technology tool known as Google Lens belonged exclusively on Google Pixel phones. But now, there’s great news for all you non-Pixel phone owners out there. Yes, you can now use Google Lens to reveal more about your photos. It’s no longer a Pixel phone exclusive, and can be found on the Google Photos app (iOS and Android)

What does Google Lens do?


Google Lens uses Google's massive wealth of data to identify information in your photos. It works on loads of different types of photos including landmarks, menus, books, plants, works of art and animals. Apparently, it can even recognise different breeds of cats and dogs.


Depending on what Google Lens recognises in your photo, you'll be given useful information along with prompts to take action if applicable. For example, if you use Google Lens to look at a business card, it’ll recognise the email address, phone number and job title of your contact. You’ll then be given the option of saving all the information with a single tap – very handy indeed.

How do I use Google Lens?


Go into your Google Photos app, and choose a photo. Then simply tap the Google Lens button at the bottom of the screen (it’s a big dot with a broken square around it. Kind of like the Instagram icon), and it’ll automatically work its AI magic. If Google Lens recognises what it sees, you’ll get more info underneath the photo.

How well does it work?


At the time of writing, the version of Google Lens on Google Photos is still an early preview, with “more functionality coming soon”. It doesn’t recognise everything - it didn’t give us any additional information on a simple photo of a pen, for example. And our favourite photo of Brad Pitt was met with a response of “Lens doesn’t recognise people”, along with a few suggestions for things to try it on: text, places, artwork and media.


Brad Pitt fans may be out of luck just for the moment then, but when you point Google Lens at the things it’s trained to recognise, it works well. Whenever we used it on a landmark it was spot on with the answer,

Try Google Lens for yourself, and let us know how you get on with it. Did it identify something unexpected? Did it get the breed of your pet correct? Post your comment below. Or, as always, feel free to ask a question.

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