Microsoft Edge is getting a reverse image search, finally

Microsoft’s flagship web browser is going to get a new feature soon. Community members were the first ones to spot this. This particular new feature, the reverse image search, is available to members who are on the early-access program via the Dev and Canary channels. This feature, as the name states, will allow users to perform searches using images as the source of information instead of text. Leopeva64-2 shared some screenshots of the new feature on Reddit and it can be seen that once the image has been analysed, the Edge browser is going to pull up a selection of related web pages and information and put them in a dedicated sidebar tab.

For those who already have access to the reverse image searches, you can right-click on an image and select “Search in sidebar for image” from the dropdown menu. This new feature builds on the existing “Search in sidebar” feature that exists for texts. The feature for reverse text search went live for the public earlier this year. Besides pulling up related images and web links, the new search feature on Edge will also extract any text content that could be useful for deciphering low-res images or for those who have trouble with vision.

As expected, this search function is powered by Microsoft’s Bing search engine. There is no “indication” yet if Edge will eventually allow users to perform the same type of searches using Google which has had this feature for years now.

The reverse image searches are already available via two early access builds, the Canary and Dev, but this feature needs to pass through a more stable Beta channel before it can be released publicly. And given this stable Beta channel receives updates every week, it is hard to determine exactly when Microsoft is going to roll this out for regular Edge users.