It used to be a feature only available on Google Pixel phones, but now Google Lens is on many more phones. You can download the app from Google Play, Android's online app store. But what is Google Lens? We explain what it is and what you can do with it.
When you try Google Lens for the first time, it just works magic. It stays that way, but you get used to it. Google Lens uses your camera to detect an object through artificial intelligence and machine learning. Depending on what type of object it is, you will then be given several options. We will go through the current options step by step:
Copy text
With Google Lens you can scan texts, where Google directly selects the text and can copy or translate it. You can also search for the piece of text on Google. You can have texts read from the internet, from paper documents: basically anything that is text can be detected by Google Lens.
Find similar products
Imagine you have a work of art at home, but you have no idea what it's called or who made it. By scanning the artwork with Google Lens, Google can look up similar images. This can lead you to websites that mention the artwork by name.
Recognize plants and animals
Suppose there is a caterpillar in your garden and you wonder what you can expect from it as a butterfly. It is useful to know which caterpillar that is. Actually, recognizing plants and animals works about the same as searching for similar products, only Google immediately shows what it's called with if you click through more information from Wikipedia.
Discover books and media
By extension, you can discover books and media. For example, if you scan a book, you will see the Google Books information (in Dutch, if available) and you will immediately know how many pages the book has, who wrote it, when it was published and what genre it concerns. A book preview can even be included, so you can already read a few pages of it if you don't have that much time to do that in the bookstore.
Scan codes
A smartphone camera is also often used to scan QR codes. Think of QR codes for internet banking and so on. Google Lens can also read QR codes and add barcodes to it. This gives you another way to quickly discover the name of the item you are holding in your hand.
Those are kind of the standard options, but there is more. For example, it is possible to photograph the SSID sticker on your router with Google Lens, after which it will automatically connect to the Wi-Fi. For example, if you walk down the street and see a restaurant where you might want to eat, Google Lens can already give you some more information such as which cuisine, some photos and possibly reviews.
This handy feature is constantly being developed. For example, thanks to a new update, the app can read menus in a restaurant, where the app indicates what the most popular dishes are and shows with a photo what that dish looks like. And it can show extra info with an article from a magazine. There are several publishers that Google has partnered with to make that possible. Think of a cooking magazine where you see a video on your smartphone showing how that recipe is used to make a dish.
For the time being, Google does not work with Dutch publishers, so for the time being you can continue to read the articles here in the normal way.
