For years, if you saw an interesting image on a website and wanted to find the original source or a higher-resolution version, you could simply right-click it in Google Chrome and select “Search Google for image.” This would perform a classic reverse image search.
Recently, Google replaced this beloved feature with Google Lens. Now, when you right-click an image and select “Search image with Google,” Chrome opens a massive side panel trying to identify products, translate text, or find similar shopping items. If you are an artist trying to find art theft, or a researcher looking for the original source of a photograph, Google Lens is often entirely useless. You can disable Lens and restore the classic reverse image search functionality.
How to Restore the Classic Reverse Image Search
Because Google aggressively pushes Lens, you cannot disable it from the standard Settings menu. You must use Chrome’s hidden experimental flags system to revert the change.
- Open the Google Chrome browser.
- Click inside the address bar at the top of the screen.
- Type the following exact command and press Enter:
chrome://flags/#enable-lens-standalone - The browser will open the hidden Experiments page, with a setting called “Enable Lens features in Chrome” (or simply “Enable Lens”) highlighted in yellow at the top.
- Click the drop-down menu next to this setting (which is currently set to “Default” or “Enabled”).
- Select Disabled from the list.
- A large blue button labelled Relaunch will appear at the absolute bottom of the screen. Click it to restart the browser.
When Google Chrome reopens, the changes will be applied. Find any image on a website and right-click it. The context menu will no longer say “Search image with Google Lens.” Instead, it will display the classic “Search Google for image” option, which will open a new tab directly to the standard, highly accurate Google Images reverse search tool.