Summary
- Google Lens now features a new grid UI for easier retracing of past searches using images snapped with the Lens camera.
- Lens History allows users to access past searches with date and time stamps, with the option to download images for reuse.
- The update to Google Lens is available in the latest version on the Play Store, making retracing search journeys more user-friendly.
Google is one of the most popular search services available today, making it easy to find anything you’re looking at or thinking of. On most of our favorite Android phones, apps like Google Search, Assistant, Lens, and more recently, Gemini, make any search a breeze. However, retracing your search journey may not be the easiest or most intuitive experience on anything but a chatbot-like Ui. Lens seems intent on making amends with a new grid UI.
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Performing the same search repeatedly is far from ideal, and Google’s autocomplete suggestions for regular search usually make retracing steps easy. Gemini stores a list of all your past conversations in the sidebar on the web, and Chrome allows pinning the History side panel on desktop. With Google Lens, you may struggle to retry a search unless you picked an image from the device gallery.
Google fixed this glaring shortcoming in Lens quite recently, with the introduction of Lens History. You can access this using the Clock icon in the upper right corner of the Lens UI or Google’s My Activity section (myactivity.google.com). Until now, prior Lens searches in the app looked exactly like the My Activity results, but 9to5Google just spotted that changing to a nicer grid view.
This history isn’t exhaustive, but is useful
Before the update (left); New grid view (right)
It’s worth noting that Google Lens history is rather selective with what’s recorded and saved for reference later. The new grid view will only feature images you snapped using the Lens camera UI, while ignoring everything captured by Circle to Search and Lens in the Google Photos app. Every entry in this grid will have the date and time you looked up the item, to help you retrace your Search journey. That’s especially useful if you use Lens a lot.
When you tap the three dots icon beside the date and time, you’ll also see an option to download the image you snapped using Lens — a wonderful option when that’s the only copy of the image you might have, but want to use elsewhere. Since the Download option now lives in the overflow menu, the default action when you tap entries in your Lens history is to reanalyze them, saving you some effort of doing it manually.
We are already seeing this change in the latest stable version of Google Lens, delivered through the Play Store, indicative of a widespread release.
