Google’s Updated App May Allow Online Searches through ‘Smart Screenshots’

Smart Screenshots essentially makes it easy for users to search using screenshots taken via the Google Lens.

Google is working on a few abilities to bring to its upcoming Pixel phones, Google Assistant, and more. The search giant might be about to pair up two mobile screen-related features, “Edit & Share screenshots” and the AI-powered “What’s on my screen,” according to some APK digging by 9 to 5 Google. The latest Google app version 10.61 APK teardown has tipped a new interesting upcoming feature called “Smart Screenshots” with Google Lens integration.

Just like before, you get to edit, share and the option to use your favorite app to send the shot, but there’s a new option with the latest version: Lens. This feature essentially makes it easy for users to perform searches using smart screenshots via Google Lens.

One can perform a search, do optical character recognition (OCR) or find visually similar items by selecting Lens. The current annotating, cropping and sharing editing tools will most probably stay as they are. However, it’s not yet clear whether the new Lens function will work for all screenshots or just those taken in Google Search.

Though its highly likely that eventually, it will become a replacement for screen search, in much the same way that Lens has taken over from other Google Assistant functions.

According to 9 to 5 Google ‘s APK digging, once your screenshot is taken, there will be multiple buttons that will pop up on the screen. A pen-shaped Edit button that will let you open the toolbar for cropping and drawing over the screenshot, a share button that will let you share the screenshot to social channels, and a new ‘Lens’ button that will let you search for objects inside the smart screenshot via Google Lens. It will let you do an OCR (optical character recognition), or find visually “similar items” in the smart screenshot.

Additionally, for quick sharing, there will be a fourth button that will show the most used sharing social platform. The report says that it’s unclear if this functionality will be limited to screenshots taken within Search and that there is no word on when this feature will be available for testing or go live for all users.

Moreover, a new redesign in Google Assistant suggestion pop-up was also tipped off to 9to5Google. Reportedly, Google is also working on making changes to the pill-shaped Google Assistant suggestions that pop-up every time we trigger the voice assistant to make more suggestions accessible.

At the moment, when the Google Assistant is triggered, it shows pill-shaped suggestions at the bottom, with a maximum of two suggestions at one time in the Assistant UI. After the redesign, the Google Assistant suggestion pop-up should show circular suggestion placed on top of the UI, instead of the bottom. The small space required by the circular redesign will show up to four suggestions at a time on the screen.

Although the tipster notes that the feature may still be in the early stage of experimentation as the listed suggestions don’t appear to change, despite location or time of day. Again, there is no word on when all users will be able to see this feature on their phones. But searching online looks like it may just become faster and faster, with Google Search leading the way with just the press of a button.