YOUR Android phone has the power to identify spiders or insects lurking in your home.
It could reveal if you’ve got a harmless critter scuttling around – or something more dangerous.
UnsplashYou can identify spider species using Google Lens[/caption]
Google Lens works on most Android phones, and is seriously powerful.
The motto is “search what you see”, and lets you scan photos for what’s on show.
For instance, you can take a photo of a plant and Google Lens will identify it.
But you can also scan photos of spiders and insects to identify them.
This can reveal the species and some information about it.
First, take a photo using your Android phone.
Then open the Google Photos app.
Now select the photo and then tap Lens, which has a square icon with a dot in the middle.
Next simply check the details to see what’s been identified.
There are some catches.
For a start, you need to take a bright and clear image for Google Lens to work properly.
The better-quality the image, the more likely you are to get an accurate result.
The other thing to note is that Google Lens isn’t perfect: it may make mistakes.
So if Google Lens does flag a creature as potentially dangerous (or not), it may be worth checking other websites to verify the info.
Google Lens can do much more than just identify plants and animals however.
It can also translate foreign-language text, identify similar products and where to buy them, save business card details to your contacts, and identify famous landmarks, buildings and paintings.
It’s like a visual search engine for the world around you.
So try to use it on some of the photos you’ve already taken to see what shows up.
Your iPhone has a similar feature called Visual Lookup.
And Google Lens will also work on iPhones inside the Google Photos app.