YouTube is integrating Google Lens, allowing viewers to search elements of what they see while watching YouTube Shorts. The visual search enhancement aims to provide more ways to unearth information and discover content in an interactive, intuitive way. YouTube provides an example involving a Short filmed on location that features landmarks a viewer may be interested in visiting. In this example, users could ask Google Lens for related information to learn the name of the destination and helpful details regarding its culture and history, results that would appear over the video content as a visual overlay. YouTube began rolling out the Lens feature in beta to all viewers last week.

TechCrunch says leveraging its parent company’s tech “makes sense” and will help set YouTube Shorts apart “since TikTok and Instagram Reels don’t offer similar functionality.”

Once users gain access, they can try it “by pausing a Short and then selecting the ‘Lens’ option in the top menu,” then either drawing, highlighting or tapping an onscreen item they’d like to search, TechCrunch explains.

“Lens will then provide visual matches and search results overlaid on the Short,” reports TechCrunch, adding that when finished “you can jump back into the content that you were watching.”

“During the beta phase of Lens in Shorts, you won’t see ads shown in the search results,” Google details in a support post. At this time “the Lens experience isn’t available for Shorts with YouTube Shopping affiliate links or with paid product promotions.” Additional details are available in the Help Center.

Aside from that, the sky’s the limit. “Google is giving users the ability to easily find anything they come across on the YouTube Shorts platform, may it be clothes, technology, restaurants, and more,” Tech Times writes.

With the app downloaded, “users may also use it to translate printed text and use it without an Internet connection, which may come in handy when traveling,” Tech Times notes.

This new functionality “comes after YouTube announced that Google Lens will let people search the Internet via video as well as still images,” PetaPixel writes, explaining that “video search lets users point their camera at an object, record it, ask a question about it, and the app will bring up search results.”

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Gemini Can Now Watch Google Drive Videos for You, The Verge, 5/29/25