Google today announced a new YouTube feature that allows you to use Google Lens while watching YouTube Shorts. With Google Lens, you can easily search for objects or places that appear in the video. This new capability is now available in the YouTube app on both iOS and Android.
Here’s how Google Lens in YouTube Shorts works:
- Play a YouTube Shorts video on the official YouTube app on your smartphone.
- Pause the video by tapping on the screen.
- In the top menu, tap the new Lens button.
- If you are tapping the Lens button for the first time, you will be presented with a message about terms and conditions to start using the feature. You can tap X or anywhere else to dismiss the message.
- To search with Google Lens, just draw, highlight, or tap on anything on the screen.
- If you want to translate captions on the video, you can just tap translate on the lower right side of the screen.
- If you are done using Google Lens, you can just tap X on the upper left-hand side of your screen or swipe down at the top of the results panel to close the results page.
Google also highlighted that you might see AI Overviews depending on the search query to help you learn more about the topic. Also, for now, this new Lens search capability will not be available to use on Shorts videos that have YouTube Shopping affiliate tags and ads will not be displayed in the search results page.
As this feature rolls out, it will be interesting to see how users leverage this new way to explore content and how it might evolve in the future.