Anyone who has waded through a lengthy document or endlessly scrolled through a cluttered webpage will be forever grateful for Ctrl+F.
This simple yet powerful keyboard shortcut lets you swiftly locate specific words and phrases, making an otherwise tedious search for information a cinch.
Now, nearly 40 years after its widespread adoption with the release of Microsoft Windows in the mid-Eighties, CTRL+F has received a handy update that modernises it for the TikTok generation.
Google Chrome now lets you perform a visual search on webpages using the humble keyboard shortcut. The feature is powered by Google Lens, the super-smart assistant that lets you find stuff by snapping a pic of it.
How to use Google Chrome’s Drag to Search
Press CTRL+F (Command+F on a Mac) simultaneously on an open tab on Chrome and you’ll see a hard-to-miss Google Lens button below the text search bar the shortcut launches, with the description “search anything on this page” next to it.
Clicking it will prompt your screen to go a bit fuzzy for a split second, before you see a glow around it, suggesting that the AI is waking up. Now, you can essentially drag a window around anything on a webpage to look it up on Google.
You can also access the function by clicking the Google Lens icon in the address bar at the top of Chrome.
Once you do so, your cursor will change to a crosshair allowing you to screenshot anything on your current open tab, with the Google Search results appearing in a side panel. In some cases, you can also refine the answers by typing in the corresponding search box.
Circle to Search for everyone?
Google announced the update as part of Chrome version 127 earlier in August, and it appears to be rolling out to users in the UK right now.
We spotted it earlier, but then it disappeared when we closed and relaunched Chrome, suggesting that it’s still a work in progress.
As 9to5Google noted, there are other ways you can activate the new tool as well. For instance, it can be accessed by pressing the three-dot menu next to the address bar in Google’s web browser. You can also pin the Lens icon here, next to other shortcuts, for frequent use.
The launch follows the arrival of Circle to Search, Google’s relatively new visual search feature that is baked into select Android phones. With it, you can look up stuff on your screen by circling, highlighting, or scribbling over text or images.
Unlike Drag to Search, Circle to Search isn’t limited to just Google Chrome, and can be used across apps.
The tool was a big part of the marketing for Samsung’s latest Galaxy S24 phones and Google’s very own Pixel 9 range.
