The Unwanted Image Overlay
Google has been aggressively integrating its “Google Lens” visual search technology into the Chrome browser. One of the most prominent features of this integration is the “Search your screen” or “Search with Google Lens” region search. When activated via the right-click context menu, the browser dims the current webpage and brings up a cropping tool, allowing you to draw a box around any image or text to immediately send it to Google’s image recognition servers. While useful for identifying products, many users find the screen-dimming overlay intrusive, especially if they accidentally click it when simply trying to save an image or copy a URL.
Removing the Lens Integration
To eliminate this feature and remove the Google Lens region search option from your context menu, you must utilize Chrome’s hidden experimental flags dashboard.
Open a new tab in Google Chrome, click into the address bar, type exactly chrome://flags, and press Enter. This will load the experiments page. In the search box at the top, type Lens Region Search or simply Google Lens. The results should filter down to a flag specifically named “Enable Lens features in Chrome” or “Search your screen with Google Lens.” Click the dropdown menu next to this flag on the right-hand side. Change the setting from “Default” to Disabled. A blue “Relaunch” button will appear at the bottom of the window; click it to restart your browser. Once Chrome reopens, the Lens region search overlay will be completely deactivated, and your right-click menu will return to its classic, uncluttered state.