CHROME
Disable the ‘Search with Google Lens’ feature
As we explained in Issue 691 (page 42), Google has now integrated its AI-powered tool Google Lens with Chrome. This lets you search for information about content on a web page – including text, images and videos – without typing anything. Instead you use Google Lens to capture a screenshot of selected content, and it displays ‘visual matches’ from across the web in the browser’s sidebar.
It’s potentially useful but Google’s implementation of the feature seems heavy-handed. A ‘Search with Google Lens’ option now appears in Chrome’s address bar, its main (three-dot) menu, the right-click menu and even in the ‘Find on page’ box ( 1 in our screenshot below) that opens when you press the Ctrl+F keyboard shortcut.
You’ll probably find all this annoying if you don’t disable the feature or at least reduce its presence in the browser. Type chrome://flags in the address bar and press Enter to load the Experiments page. Find the entry Lens overlay 2 , select Disabled in its dropdown menu 3 and click Relaunch. When Chrome reopens, all mention of Google Lens will have gone.
Alternatively, to keep Google Lens but remove its button from the address bar, choose ‘Enabled with no omnibox entry point’ in the dropdown menu. Google may eventually ditch the option to disable Lens, but it’s likely the feature itself is here to stay.