The Latest Google App Beta Hints At An Easier One-Handed Lens Experience
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Before the launch of Circle to Search and Gemini’s Live view mode, Google Lens was the tech giant’s flagship visual search product. Now, although my reliance on Lens has significantly reduced when it comes to searching through images, I still use the app often for real-world searches.
Google knows this too, and that is precisely why the app now immediately launches your camera for instant visual search of your surroundings. This change went live earlier this year when the tech giant repositioned Lens to focus on real-world search.
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Now, in its continuous effort to enhance Lens, Google seems to be testing a minor change that could have major quality of life benefits.
For reference, currently, when you initiate a Google Lens image search, either from the saved photos in your gallery, or via the camera’s live view, the app takes you straight into a Google Search instance. Right at the bottom, users have a search bar to refine and narrow down their search.
To actually see the search results related to the image, users have to scroll up, which, in turn, pushes the search bar to the top of the screen. This isn’t ideal for one-handed use, especially if you want to further refine your search, and that is exactly what Google appears to be addressing with a new tweak that it is testing.
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Easier one-handed control on the way
As spotted by the folks over at Android Authority in the Google App’s latest version 16.22.44 beta build, the Search bar retains its bottom position even when the Search interface expands to fill the entire screen. This should allow for a seamless one-handed Lens search session, as seen in the short video above, allowing you to look at information Google found all while having the search bar within reach.
The change was manually enabled, so downloading the beta build will not surface it for you. It isn’t entirely clear when the tweak might go live, but we certainly hope the convenient design makes its way out widely soon.
