For today’s edition of our How-to series, let’s have a look at How to do a Google image search on an iPhone.
You might be like me, and you end up with a pic you like, but you know not of its source or a clue about anything related to it. Well, you have the option of reverse image search on google to help you find the stuff you want so that you can count yourself out from this pesky problem.
But hey, isn’t that option exclusive to android users alone?
Nope, that’s available on Apple too, provided you have the pic ready and the technical know-how to access that option on your browser. We will detail the steps you can follow to access reverse image search, both on Safari and Chrome, leaving no stone unturned.
Let us begin with the reverse search in Safari on an iPhone.
What is Google’s Reverse Image Search?
Google accomplishes Reverse Image Search by analyzing the submitted picture and constructing a mathematical model out of many pictures on the Web using native algorithms.
It is then cross-matched with billions of other images lying in Google’s databases all over the world. Google also uses reference data about the image, which is taken from the description and Alt text accompanying the image.
You Might Also Like | How is Reddit different from Facebook?
Reverse image Search is mostly used to verify a photograph’s source, whether it be a WhatsApp image, screenshot, or an Internet meme.
Journalists also use reverse search to find the source of an image or know when it was uploaded on the Internet. Photographers use this feature to know whether websites are using their photographs without permission, leading to copyright issues.
All the uploaded images are hosted anonymously on Google Cloud and cannot be accessed by others. All photos are automatically removed from the cloud storage within a few hours of uploading, so you don’t have to worry about your private pictures getting accessed by those snoopy hackers.
On Safari
- Go over the “Safari” browser from the home screen of your iPhone and head over to images.google.com.
- The search bar in Safari lacks a camera icon usually found on desktop browsers which allows you to reverse search images. So you go ahead and tap on the “aA” icon located on the left of the address bar.
- You’ll receive a pop-up where you can adjust website settings. Tap on “Request Desktop Website” to reload and access the desktop version of the web page.
- After you have got into the desktop version of Google Images, you’ll notice the “camera” icon situated on the right end of the search bar.
- You can either search by pasting the image URL or you could upload/capture an image from your iPhone. To reverse search an image stored on your iPhone, go for the following steps.
“Choose File” >>> “Photo Library” >>> “Camera Roll”
Then you can scour the albums to find the picture you want to search for.
- Google will begin its search the moment a photo has been uploaded, and it will fetch results related to the picture you want to search for. If you’re looking for more sizes of the same picture on the Web, you can download one of the sizes displayed next to your uploaded image.
Google Chrome
There are two ways you can use the Google image search on an iPhone, you can either Upload and Search or make a search on-the-go as you are browsing the internet. The step-by-step guide to perform both the methods can be found below.
Upload and Search
- Go to the Google Chrome and head over to google.com/imghp
- Click on the Camera Icon and it will ask you either paste an URL or upload and image
- Click on “Upload” and it will open your gallery
- Now select an image you want to reverse search
- Once uploaded, the search will start and show results
Google Image Search On-The-Go
- Go to the Chrome App on your iPhone, and open up a new tab.
- Go over to any website, or search for any image in general.
- Now, Press and hold on to the image you want to search for until a pop-up menu gets displayed on the screen’s bottom. You have the option of reverse searching the image directly without even having to save the image or copying the image URL over to the image search webpage. This is a very handy feature to have, especially if you don’t have much time in your hands.
- Google Chrome doesn’t take you over to the desktop version of its web page while showing the search results like what Safari does. You can also download more sizes or higher resolutions which will be displayed along with it.
Limitations of Google Image Search
Please be wary of the fact that Google has indexed not all images which are online, probably because Google has not found them or because the owner of the image has not allowed Google to index them. Moreover, images with dimensions over 8000 x 6000 pixels cannot be used for reverse image searches.
Alternative Methods
Multiple search engines are solely dedicated to reverse image search like Tineye, Yandex, etc. There are also third-party reverse image searching apps available on AppStore like Reverse, Veracity, and many others you can use for your images.
You Might Also Like | Ecosia VS DuckDuckgo | How They Compare and Make Money?
We are mainly focused on Google reverse image search over here, probably because Google is the search engine that fetches the most accurate results compared to anything out there, and it’s used by almost everyone who has access to the Internet. It is only fair to give it preference over third-party applications and other search engines.
Final Take By Tecvalue
So we hope that you might have got an idea of how to do a reverse image search on an iPhone.
We have tried our best to give a detailed explanation of the steps you will have to take to access the reverse image search option on both Safari and Google Chrome.
Google image search was introduced way back in 2011, and it has become very advanced over the years, to the point that an image that is used for a reverse image search is analyzed by the distinctive points, colors, lines, and textures present in the image ( talk about details ! )
If you liked what you read above, please be sure to check out the rest of the articles here.