YouTube Shorts are a pretty popular way of consuming videos. Many people undoubtedly watch them on a daily basis. Well, YouTube just announced a pretty major update to Shorts, and it might make it easier to extract data from them. According to the company, you will be able to use Google Lens directly within YouTube Shorts.
Over the years, Google has integrated Lens into many of its services. This technology analyzes what’s on your screen or in your viewfinder to immediately initiate a search, translate text, copy text, Etc. So, it should come as no surprise that Google brought the functionality over to YouTube.
YouTube Shorts will soon use Google Lens
It’s important to know that this is an upcoming feature. As such, it hasn’t made it to users. However, it will roll out as a beta test in the coming weeks. You will want to be patient. The best thing you can do is keep your YouTube app updated.
It’ll be pretty easy to access Google Lens while you’re watching a YouTube Short. Firstly, pause the video by tapping on the screen once. Then, open the three-dot menu at the top right corner of the screen. There, you should see the Lens button. Tapping on it will bring up a Google Lens overlay.
From that point, just circle the portion of the screen that you want to do a search on. After that, you will see the panel slide up from the bottom with the search results.
This function will basically bring the Circle to Search feature to the YouTube app. Many Android users who already have this feature may not find much use for it. However, if your phone isn’t compatible with Circle to Search, then you will appreciate the Google Lens integration.
There are a few things to know
Firstly, if you’re watching a video that has shopping affiliate links or features a paid Product Promotion, Lens will not work. That’s pretty unfortunate, but it’s understandable. Lastly, during the beta testing phase, users will not see ads in the search results. However, we know that they will pop up at some point down the line.
It seems odd that YouTube is bringing Google Lens to Shorts, but not regular videos. It’s a bit of a shame, but hopefully, YouTube will amend this.