Yay! I just learned how!

I use the “Search Google for image” option on my desktop Google Chrome a lot. If you don’t use it, you should give it a try!

Wait, you can’t try it right now. They disabled the option and replaced it with Google Lens, which doesn’t do the same thing. But there is hope!

I kept forgetting that my beloved function had disappeared, and right-clicked every image I was curious about.

• Does this photo really belong to this person? Right-click, search Google for image, no. He’s this model from France! What a liar!
• Was this free stock image used on Medium before? Search. Yes, at least four articles have the same title image!
• Is there a better quality of this image somewhere? Search, pick “large” and here it is!
• What a beautiful lake! I should go there someday. Where is it? Search. It’s this famous lake in Croatia!

You get the point. Without the search by image option, I couldn’t even procrastinate the way I enjoyed it. I found myself obsessed with some images and had to work like a detective for half an hour to find the image by searching it using various keywords. “lake walkway” “lake waterfall walkway” “blue lake waterfall walkway” etc.

So today I saw a gorgeous illustration of New Zealand birds and I wanted to take a little printout for myself. But it was a thumbnail, so I hoped to find a bigger one. But Google Lens showed me other similar images, not the one I was looking for. It was so annoying!

I said enough is enough! I will find a way to access the old function!

And I found it on Reddit! All you have to do is to disable Google Lens!

So I did exactly what one commenter suggested: I went to chrome://flags/#enable-lens-region-search and disabled Google Lens. When I restarted Chrome, my old friend was back!

So now you know what to do if you were also a big fan of image searches. Good luck!