Google announced support for Google Lens on iOS at the I/O conference last year. It’s finally going live now with Google Photos according to a post on the Google Photos Twitter page.
The company announced that the feature will roll out to all users of Google Photos over the coming weeks, so don’t be surprised if you can’t see it on Google Photos yet. Lens can basically analyze your pictures and provide relevant details based on the subjects of the photos.
For example, if you have a photo of a book, Lens can give you information on the author as well as other relevant details on the book, including reviews. The same applies to pictures of animals, flowers etc, allowing you to determine the species and their genealogy.
Starting today and rolling out over the next week, those of you on iOS can try the preview of Google Lens to quickly take action from a photo or discover more about the world around you. Make sure you have the latest version (3.15) of the app.https://t.co/Ni6MwEh1bu pic.twitter.com/UyIkwAP3i9
— Google Photos (@googlephotos) March 15, 2018
Google Lens made its debut with the Google Pixel 2 lineup last year and has been slowly expanding ever since. This new wave of expansion, however, will prove to be significant given that iOS users had no access to Lens prior to this. The feature is available as part of the Google Photos 3.15 update, so be sure to look out for an update.
The use cases with a feature like this are several, including the ability to take a photo of the Wi-Fi SSID and password to automatically save them on your device. It’s opt-in, naturally, so there shouldn’t be any massive privacy concerns. Lens is only activated when you tap the square camera icon located below an image on Google Photos.
Download → Google Photos from the App Store