Chrome for iOS Gets Google Lens Update, Shopping Insights and More

[MacRumors]

Google today announced several new features for the Chrome browser that's available on the iPhone and the iPad, with the new additions aimed at providing users with more intuitive ways for finding information and completing tasks.

Google Lens now supports searching with images and text at the same time, rather than search being limited to just an image. Users can add words to a visual query to refine results and conduct more complex searches.

Google Drive and Google Photos users can now save content from the web directly to those services from Chrome, freeing up on-device storage space. To save a file to Google Drive from Chrome, tap on the Google Drive option. Saving an image to Photos from Chrome can be done by long pressing on the image and then selecting the Save in Google Photos option.

For U.S. users, Chrome on iOS is gaining Shopping Insights, which are designed to better surface deals. If Chrome has Shopping Insights for a product that a user is searching for, there will be a "Good Deal Now" notification in the address bar. The feature requires signing into Chrome and toggling on "Make Searches and Browsing Better."

When viewing a map of an address in Chrome, users will soon be able to tap an underlined address and see a more detailed mini-map of the location directly in the browser without having to swap over to Google Maps. Google says that it is experimenting with this feature and will roll it out globally over the coming months.


Article Link: Chrome for iOS Gets Google Lens Update, Shopping Insights and More

 

[jb310]

Chrome on mobile would be such an incredibly nice browser, if only it supported extensions and content blockers (like Safari or even the iOS version of Edge does).

Sadly it does not, so it's just ads all day every day. 😢

 

[javisan]

Chrome on mobile would be such an incredibly nice browser, if only it supported extensions and content blockers (like Safari or even the iOS version of Edge does).

Sadly it does not, so it's just ads all day every day. 😢

1000% this 👆

But it's not Google's fault. Apple is the one forcing other browsers to use Webkit, but at the same time not granting everyone equal access to its capability. Only Safari is allowed to have browser extensions.

Hi @DOJ, please include this as part of the case.

 

[jz0309]

More reasons to not use Chrome in the first place

 

[ProbablyDylan]

But it's not Google's fault. Apple is the one forcing other browsers to use Webkit, but at the same time not granting everyone equal access to its capability. Only Safari is allowed to have browser extensions.

What's funny is that Kagi has web extension support in their Orion browser. Meaning the user could navigate to the Chrome web store and grab extensions on an iOS browser. Orion is in the App Store so it would appear Apple has no issue with it.

 

[Nickerbocker]

1000% this 👆

But it's not Google's fault. Apple is the one forcing other browsers to use Webkit, but at the same time not granting everyone equal access to its capability. Only Safari is allowed to have browser extensions.

Hi @DOJ, please include this as part of the case.

Isn't Google cracking down on adblockers regardless? As in, even if Chrome on iOS did support extensions, Google wouldn't allow adblocking extensions.

 

[bradman83]

I'm irked that not a single third party browser on iOS/iPad supports a simple and basic feature of a desktop browser: a bookmarks/favorites toolbar. Safari implements one just fine (although it's been glitchy on iPad since iPadOS 17), but none of the other browsers do. I can't possibly believe it's an iOS/iPad limitation when plenty of other apps have custom menus.

 

[Thisismattwade]

Google Lens is great; I just used it this weekend to fix some drawers in our kitchen.

 

[chris1958]

Isn't Google cracking down on adblockers regardless? As in, even if Chrome on iOS did support extensions, Google wouldn't allow adblocking extensions.

That is simply not true. Every browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) are now supporting Manifest V3, the way the adblocker interacts with the browser. Chrome may be the first browser to drop support for V2. But every adblocker needs to adapt regardless of the browser.

 

[javisan]

Isn't Google cracking down on adblockers regardless? As in, even if Chrome on iOS did support extensions, Google wouldn't allow adblocking extensions.

Not true. Google is cracking down on Manifest V2 extensions, which includes the best (IMO) adblocker, uBlock Origin. The developer released, and Google allowed, a Manifest V3 compliant version, uBlock Origin Lite, which blocks ads just as effectively. It just loses some customization/features that are only possible on the V2 Manifest version, but not a dealbreaker (still even blocks YouTube ads).

The point here is that Apple should really either drop the requirement for developers to use Webkit to create iOS browsers or, if not, then grant all 3rd party iOS browser developers full access to the same tools/features of Webkit. There is no need to cripple 3rd party developers. If Apple does so, and Google does not incorporate extensions in their iOS version of Chrome, then we can blame Google.

 

[redbeard331]

Beating Apple once again, not locked behind a button that only comes on $1000+ new phones.

 

[Jonasgold]

1000% this 👆

But it's not Google's fault. Apple is the one forcing other browsers to use Webkit, but at the same time not granting everyone equal access to its capability. Only Safari is allowed to have browser extensions.

Hi @DOJ, please include this as part of the case.

Then why doesn't Google support Chrome extensions on Android? Google, as an ad-business, hates extensions because they're mainly uses for adblocking. They only support it on the Desktop because it was a major featurw of Firefox(biggest browser, when Chrome was first launched).

 

[svish]

Changes to Google Lens is good. Will be useful.