How to Reverse Image Search on Chrome: Lens, Bing and TinEye

Reverse image search is built into Chrome, but the menu wording has changed more than once. That is why so many older guides describe options you will not find. The engine behind it is Google Lens, which Google said in October 2024 handles nearly 20 billion visual searches every month.

This guide covers the built-in option on a computer and a phone, a page search that works where right-clicking does not, how to add Bing and TinEye, and the one question reverse search cannot answer.

1. Step 1Check your default search engineOpen the three-dot More menu, then Settings and Search engine. If another engine is set, choose Change and pick Google. Google’s help pages list this as a requirement for Lens.
2. Step 2Right-click the pictureOn a Mac, hold Control while you click. On a Chromebook, tap the touchpad with two fingers, or press Alt and click.
3. Step 3Choose Search with Google LensGoogle says the results can include what is in the image, similar images, and websites that use the same or a similar image.
4. Step 4Open a resultResults stay in the side panel. Selecting one opens it in a new tab, so the page you started from stays put.

The picture does not have to be on a web page. On google.com, Search by image takes a file from your computer, an image dragged into the search box, or a pasted image link.

On Android you can drag the corners of the box to search only part of the image. On both phones, Google again says Google must be Chrome’s default search engine. The full phone routes, including photos already in your camera roll, are in how to reverse image search on your phone.

Google’s own help page for the setting warns that a Chrome feature might not be available if your search engine does not support it. Chromium, the open-source code Chrome is built on, shows the detail. The image item is only added when the default engine has an image-search address, and in the US list only Google and Bing have one. With Bing as the default, the item searches Bing instead of Google.

Two other causes are worth checking. Some sites block the right-click menu, and some pictures are page backgrounds rather than images, so the image options never appear. The page search described below gets around both. On a work or school computer, an administrator may manage the search engine or switch the Lens panel off. If the panel is off, Chrome shows a plainer label, Search image with Google, which still sends the picture to Google.

If what you really want is the first place a picture appeared, there is a better fit. TinEye’s Chrome extension can open its results sorted by oldest, and the TinEye guide explains why that sort matters.

It is also a quick way to crop. Google’s own tip is that a smaller selection gives more specific results, and dragging a box does that without saving or editing a file. A single shopfront beats a whole street. Which engine to try first for a place is a separate question, answered in Google Lens vs Yandex.

You can pin the option to the toolbar, or reach it by right-clicking an empty part of a page. One privacy point: Google says it receives a screenshot of the page, keeps it only for that search, and does not use it for training. Even so, avoid running it on a tab that shows something private, such as an open inbox.

Each engine can only match what it has indexed, so the same picture can draw a blank on one and match on another. Running two of them costs a minute. For Yandex, open yandex.com/images and press the image-search button to the right of the search bar. It accepts a file, a pasted image or an image address.

TinEye is the odd one out. It looks for copies of the same file, including crops, resizes and edits, not different photos of the same subject. Extensions that bundle dozens of engines into one menu also exist, but they come from third parties and handle every image you send through them. Check who makes one, and what it asks permission to do, before installing.

The engines say as much themselves. Yandex notes that results depend on whether an image exists online and has been indexed. TinEye says it does not usually find different photos of the same subject, and it does not typically index social media images. A holiday photo that only ever lived in a group chat has nothing to match.

Two checks come first. If the file still carries GPS coordinates in its metadata, those answer it directly, and here is how to read them. If not, the question changes from "where else is this picture online?" to "what place does this scene show?" That is a job for reading location from visual clues, not for matching.

That is what the GeoSpy extension adds to the same right-click menu. Choose Find where this photo was taken and a side panel shows the estimated place, a confidence percentage and a map, with Open in Google Maps and Copy coordinates buttons. If a JPEG still has GPS data in its EXIF, the answer comes from that. Otherwise it is an AI estimate based on what the picture shows.

The extension is free to install, but analysis needs a geospys.com account with GeoSpy Premium, at US$7.99 a week or US$29.99 a year. Nothing is read until you right-click an image. Its permissions cover the right-click menu, the side panel, the active tab, scripting and storage, and its only host access is geospys.com. More on the extension page.