Google has been removing the “View Image” button from its image search results for a while now, and it seems like the company is not planning on bringing it back anytime soon. This button allows users to view images without having to leave the search results page. Some people may be disappointed that Google is no longer providing this feature, but there are ways to bring it back if you want to use it. The first step is to go to Google Images and open up a search result. Once you’re in the search result, click on the three lines in the top left corner of the screen. From here, you can select “Show Image Details” and then click on “View Image”. If you want to keep using the “View Image” button even if Google doesn’t plan on bringing it back officially, you can download a third-party extension that will do the same thing. There are also some unofficial methods that people have found online, but they may not be safe or reliable. ..
Google’s image-based search engine has been a staple of the internet for more than a decade. But this morning it got a little less useful: in addition to making the reverse image search tool harder to find, the “Show Image” button has disappeared.
The button formerly functioned as a direct link to the image in question, allowing users to bypass the hosting web site itself. Its disappearance is apparently due to an agreement Google has made with the stock image provider Getty Images, in order to get the latter’s photo content included in image search results.
But have no fear, web image junkies. Only a few hours after the news broke, an independent developer released a Chrome extension that returns the button to its proper place. “View Image” from developer Joshua Butt returns the button to the Google Images interface, restoring the direct link function that Google and Getty are apparently no longer interested in supporting.
Using the extension is simple: just click “Add to Chrome” in the Chrome Web Store page, and the next time you search Google Images, the “View Image” button will be back in its familiar home.
We’re generally wary of recommending brand new extensions for Chrome or other browsers, but Butt has published the extension as an open source project on GitHub, and it appears to be free of the adware that’s been gradually infecting popular free extensions for the last year or so.
We’ll update this article if and when similar extensions are added to the public repositories for Firefox and Opera. And if you don’t feel like using an extension for this very basic functionality, remember that you can always access the original image by right-clicking the Google Images result, then selecting “Open image in new tab.” It won’t give you the original, full-size image every time (sometimes it’ll give you a scaled-down thumbnail), but it’s worth a shot.
