How to Do a Reverse Image Search From an Android Phone

Finding pictures online associated with a particular subject is easy, but the same doesn’t always apply to reverse image search, especially if you’re using an Android device. This tutorial goes through some of the methods available to you if you want to find out information about a certain image on Android.

How Can Reverse Image Search Be Used?

Reverse image search can come in handy in a variety of scenarios. The first is finding the source of a beautiful image you’ve spotted somewhere. Perhaps you’d like to know more about the photographer/painter or determine the copyright status of an image before using it. Alternatively, you can search for similar images.

At the same time, reverse image search can be a great discovery tool. You can use it to identify anything from products and cover art to actors and dog breeds. It could potentially even help you tell whether a person is using their real photos online. Its applications are endless, really.

Stumbled upon an interesting font? Here are the best tools to easily help you identify fonts from an image.

1. Use a Dedicated Website

This method is best used when trying to find an image’s source. For the purposes of this article, we’ve downloaded an image from the stock site Unsplash and set out to see whether we could locate its source via reverse image search using these tools.

Reverse Image Search

One of the websites that will help you on your mobile browser is Reverse Image Search. Unfortunately, you’ll need to log in with a Google account if you wish to use the service, but beyond, that there aren’t any other restrictions.

1. Once you’ve signed in, you can either drag and drop your images into the website’s dedicated container or click on it to manually browse until you find the file in question.

2. Wait a few seconds for the image to upload.

3. Check out the results, including a list of “Visually Similar Images.”

4. Find the “Image Sources” at the bottom. As you can see, Unsplash is the first result on the list for the image we’ve chosen.

5. Tapping the link takes you to an Unsplash page showcasing images tagged with “gaming pc” (the term used when searching for the picture with the intent of downloading it). Our image was the second on the list.

6. Note that you can perform only five free searches a day. For more, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid subscription starting from $4.49/month.

TinEye

If you don’t have a Google account and don’t want to create one just to use the tool mentioned above, the TinEye website allows you to perform a reverse image search with fewer clicks.

1. Open TinEye in your mobile browser.
2. Press the “Upload” button if the image is stored on your device or paste the image URL in the field below, then wait a few seconds.

3. Scroll through the results and tap on the links to go directly to the source.
4. As you can see, in this case, the first hit isn’t “Unplash.” However, stock site sources are marked with a “stock” tag, so it was quite easy to locate the source of our image.

5. If you think you know the website the image came from and just need the link, you can use the bar below the image to filter by website (or collection).

2. With Google Lens

Google Lens is a service that comes integrated in many of Google’s apps, and you can use it to quickly perform a reverse image search. The tool is best suited for finding similar images or detecting what or who appears in a photo.

You can access Google Lens via its dedicated app or through a host of apps, including the Google app, Google Photos and Chrome. Since the Google app and Chrome are preinstalled on most Android devices, we are showing you how to perform a reverse image search using both.

Google App

1. Open the Google app on your phone.
2. Tap on the camera icon on the right in the Search bar to open Google Lens.

3. Take a picture by tapping on the camera button at the top or browse through your gallery for the image in question. We opted for the second scenario.

4. The software will scan your image and immediately display the results.
5. We had a few matches, mainly through websites that used the same image, but we couldn’t find an Unsplash reference.

6. You can add more data by pressing the “Add to your search” button at the top.
7. We added the term “Unsplash,” but still, Lens failed to offer any references to the website.

8. Alternatively, we used an image featuring a consumer product (facial serum) and scanned it with Google Lens via the Google app. The first match was on the official website. We were also able to discover the product’s name and found places to purchase it.

Tip: learn how to quickly pin extensions to the Google Chrome toolbar.

Google Chrome

You can also make use of the Google Chrome web browser on your Android smartphone to perform a reverse image search.

1. Navigate to the website that features the desired image.
2. Long-press on the image to make a list of options appear.
3. Select “Search image with Google Lens.”

4. After a moment, you’ll see the results appear underneath. They mainly focus on similar images.

5. In our example, if you wanted to know the breed of the cat, you’d have to crop the image to keep the cat while leaving out the text.

Note: Google now harnesses the power of Lens to perform reverse image searches via Google Images on PC.

3. Try a Third-Party App

If you like the idea of having a dedicated reverse image search app on your phone, install Photo Sherlock, one of the best options outside Google Lens. The app relies on Bing instead of Google to do its work.

1. Open Photo Sherlock on your phone and tap on “Select a photo” if you already have the photo or simply take the photo at that time.

2. Once the image has been updated, tap “Search” at the bottom.

3. Scroll to view the results, which feature similar consumer products from the same brand. One of the hits pointed us to the official product page.

At the same time, we managed to use the app to identify a specifies of rare orchids.

Tip: explore a few more Android apps that are worthy alternatives to Google Lens.

4. Use Another Search Engine

If you don’t want to rely on Google for your search results, you can switch to another search engine. For instance, Yandex allows you to do a quick reverse image search.

1. Go to yandex.com in any browser on your mobile.
2. Select “Images” underneath the search bar.

3. Tap on the lens-like icon in the search bar and select your photo. Hit “Done” in the upper-right corner.

4. The search results will show up.

You can also access Bing from your browser if you don’t want to download apps that use it for a reverse image search.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I get different results with different search engines?

Each search engine operates differently and uses a distinct algorithm, which is why you get different results and rankings even if you use the same image to search. You can use that in your favor to get the best results when performing a reverse image search.

Can I do a reverse image search on an iPhone?

Sure. Actually, most of the tips we’ve shared in this article also apply to iOS devices. However, there are a few extra methods that may be useful if you’re sporting an Apple phone (or tablet), such as using Visual Basic Look Up.

Why does reverse image search fail to work sometimes?

If you’re not getting any results for an image, it might mean that the website where the image appears is preventing images from being indexed. If you’re trying to identify the items in the image or to see whether others are using the same image, take a photo of it with your phone, then use Google Lens to do a reverse search.

All images by Alexandra Arici.