The iOS version of Google's Chrome browser is being updated with several features from the Android version, including Google Lens simultaneous image and text search. Chrome for iOS could already use Google Lens to search for an image on your iPhone or one taken with the camera, but now you can add words to narrow down your search in one go.
For example, you can upload an image of a t-shirt design you like to Lens and type the name of the color you prefer in the search, and it will try to find the t-shirt you want. This update comes as Apple launched its own Visual Intelligence search, which only works on iPhone 16 and 16 Pro.
The new iOS Chrome also lets you save images and files (like PDFs) from the web directly to Google Photos and Google Drive, allowing you to access them from somewhere else quickly and without taking up your iPhone's local storage. This could be useful for those who have already filled up Apple's measly 5GB of free iCloud storage or who would prefer to use Google Drive.
Additionally, iOS Chrome is getting Purchasing informationwhich can notify you about a “Good deal now” in the address bar of the products you are looking for and get access to a price tracker. You will have to sync your browsing history with Google and activate “Improve search and navigation”, which sends Google the URLs of the pages you visit.
There's also now a minimap viewer in Chrome that lets you tap an address on a website and take a look at where it is on a Google Map, without having to open Google Maps in another tab or switch to the Google Maps app. According to Google, more features will be added to iOS Chrome in the coming months.
