A couple of years back, Google introduced Reverse Image Search, allowing users to search for information with an image rather than words. This was great news for anyone who has ever wanted to know details of a particular picture or item that they’ve found online (or taken a photo of!), but the feature has been limited to desktop use. The feature to reverse image search was only available on the desktop edition of Google Image Search. While Google’s own search app offers an image search, we’ve found it to be slow and inefficient – simply not the best tool for the job.

Since so many folks use mobile devices to access the internet, desktop-only access was a bummer to many. Luckily, a number of developers thought so too, and now there is a selection of apps and web services available that allow you to reverse image search from your mobile device. Reverse image search is a great way for students to discover more information about the images they have, and you can create a variety of classroom tasks centered around searching for information with images. We’ve rounded up a few of our favorite tools below. If you have a favorite tool that we haven’t included, let us know! Share with the Daily Genius community by leaving a comment below, dropping us a line on Twitter, or heading over to the Daily Genius Facebook Page and leaving us a note there.

4 Ways to Reverse Image Search on Your Phone

From your mobile browser: Tech guru Amit Agarwal has put his skills to work making a wrapper for Google’s tool that works on mobile browsers. First, ensure that you’ve saved the photo you want to search with to the Galley on Android or to Photos on your iOS device. Simply point your browser here, click the ‘Select Image’ button, and upload the photo you want to search with. Click ‘Search’, and voilà. The developer, Agarwal, says that the tool doesn’t share any information with other apps, so you don’t need to worry about student privacy.

Google Goggles

Goggles is a free Android App from Google that not only allows users to reverse image search, but can also search text in multiple languages and functions as a QR code reader. As a free app, it offers a lot of bang for your (non!) buck in the classroom.

Veracity

Veracity is a free iOS app that allows users to upload photos from the Camera Roll or Dropbox and search to find the original source of the photo online, as well as information about the image. The app offers a simple and easy to use interface, and offers a clipboard where you can save images to search.

Blippar

Blippar is already a popular app for classrooms, and while it may not be the focus of the tool, it offers the ability to search for information based on an image. We’ve talked about this awesome augmented-reality app before, and a simple reverse image search is really an overly simplified version of what it can do. Blippar can trigger videos by scanning the photo, and students can be challenged with associated quizzes, animations, and follow-up reading.