This week, Microsoft updated its Edge mobile browser on iOS to support intelligent visual search, paste and go/search in the address bar, and more. This functionality first debuted in Microsoft Edge for Android about a month ago. And it is also available in the Bing app for Android and iOS, and the Microsoft Launcher for Android.

“Microsoft’s new intelligent visual search technology allows users to discover information about objects captured in images without having to pick and choose a handful of keywords to fit into a search box,” Microsoft’s John Roach explains. “The visual search feature uses Microsoft’s computer vision algorithms, which are trained with datasets containing vast amounts of labeled images, as well as images from around the web. From the training images, the algorithms learn to recognize dogs from cats, for example, and roses from daisies.”

In Microsoft Edge on mobile, visual search lets you use your device’s camera to initiate a search: Just tap the Camera icon in the address bar while viewing a new tab, point at the object for which you’d like to search, and go: A search results page will appear based on the object. The latest update on iOS also adds Paste and Go/Search support to the address bar, more default search engine options (though I just see Google and Yahoo), and some performance improvements, Microsoft says.

This update also follows a long line of steady improvements to Edge on mobile this year. Microsoft added support for its e-book platform to the app back in May, for example, and split view support for iPad in June.

You can download Microsoft Edge for iOS—there are versions for iPhone and iPad—for free from the Apple App Store.

Tagged with Edge for iOS, Microsoft Edge