How To Do A Reverse Image Search From Your Phone

Image search is the ability to search on a term and find images related to what you typed. Most search engines offer it, and it’s great. But what if you have an image and want to know its origin or find similar photos? That’s called a reverse image search.

- Eric Griffith

Google’s reverse image search is a breeze on a desktop computer: Go to images. google.com, click the camera icon, and either paste in the URL for an image you’ve seen online, upload an image from your hard drive, or drag an image from another window.

What about when you’re on a mobile device and want to do a reverse-image lookup? There are options.

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 Google built a reverse-image search function into phones and tablets, albeit on a very limited basis.

First, you cannot do a traditional reverse-image search with the standard Google app or via images.google.com on mobile browsers such as Safari or Chrome. The camera icon doesn’t show up in the search bar, so there’s no way to upload an image for a reverse search on mobile.

But the Chrome browser app for iOS and Android supports a reverse-image search workaround: When you have the image you want to search, hold your finger on it until a pop-up menu appears; pick “Search Google For This Image” at the bottom. Note: This will not work in the Google app or other browsers (not even in Safari).

If for some reason this doesn’t work, you can also select Open Image. Then copy the URL, go back to images. google.com, and paste in the URL.

With either method, the results of a reverse-image search then appear, with lots of options to narrow your query, such as finding animated GIFs or clip-art equivalents, or looking by the color scheme used in the original image.

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