The more photographs and screenshots you have on your phone the harder it is for you to find specific things when you go looking for them, right? Well, Google might have finally brought forth a solution for this.
A new feature in Google Photos finally makes it easier for you to search for images or photographs with texts on them. This meaning you can search specific things in order to find screenshotted recipes and other things of the sort. While it might sound simple, this is a real game changer for many.
If you’ve ever scrolled through your photo library for at least 20-30 minutes only to still be unable to find what you’re looking for you know exactly why this is an amazing feat in some ways. While not everyone has this feature just yet keep an eye on your app for it as it should be coming for those who do not have it very soon (keep updated). Small changes like this really make for a very comfortable and smooth operating app.
You spotted it! Starting this month, we’re rolling out the ability to search your photos by the text in them.
Once you find the photo you’re looking for, click the Lens button to easily copy and paste text. Take that, impossible wifi passwords 😏
— Google Photos (@googlephotos) August 22, 2019
How To Search For Photos:
Open the Google Photos app.
Tap on the search bar and type whatever it is you believe you’re looking for.
From here the images will be sorted through and brought you to it. From here all you have to do is tap on the image and there it is.
You can then use Google Lens to highlight all of the text in the photo and tap on the parts you need to be copied. This making it much easier to copy things like instructions or recipes as noted above.
Wow, @googlephotos has OCR to turn screenshots into copy/paste text!
A. Open google photos and select screenshot
B. Pick “Lens” feature [image 1] C. Highlight text [image 2] D. Pick copy/paste [image 2,3]Nicely done Google team! pic.twitter.com/Um49ika2yT
— 👨🏻💻☕️ (@hunterwalk) August 21, 2019
Gizmodo reported as follows in regards to this update and how it works:
The way the new Google Photos features works is that after your pics are uploaded to the cloud, Google uses OCR (on-screen character recognition) to scan your photos and then tag them with the related text. Then, the next time you’re looking for a picture of a receipt, you could simply search for the name of the business the receipt came from or the name of the item instead of scrolling through hundreds or thousands of photos.
What do you think about this update? Would you use the search option or will you ignore it even after you have it? I for one would be glad to partake in its use if I were using Google Photos regularly. Please keep in mind as well even if you are using Apple devices you can still use Google Photos and many people believe it is a much better option than ICloud.