Reverse search a video on GoogleThe frame method, on any device
Google does not let you upload a video and search with it. There is no video upload button in Google Search or Google Lens. What you can do is search with still frames: pause the video on a clear moment, take a screenshot or select it with Lens, and Google looks for pages that show the same or similar images.
It works well when you pick good frames and search several of them. Below is how to do it on a computer, on Android and on iPhone, how to choose frames, how to read what Google shows you, and where the method runs out.
On a computer: Chrome and Google Images
On desktop you have two routes. Both start by pausing the video on the moment you want to search.
- 1.Chrome, directly on the page. Pause the video, right-click an empty part of the page (not the player, which often shows its own menu) and choose Search with Google Lens. Drag the selection box over the paused frame. Results open in a side panel. The same option is also in Chrome's three-dot menu.
- 2.Google Images, with a screenshot. Take a screenshot of the paused frame (Windows: Win+Shift+S; Mac: Cmd+Shift+4), go to images.google.com, click the camera icon in the search bar and upload the image or drag it in.
The screenshot route works in any browser and lets you crop exactly what you want before searching. Crop out black bars, player controls and subtitles you added yourself; they add noise without helping the match.
On a phone: Android and iPhone
Android. On phones that support it, Circle to Search is the quickest way. Pause the video, long-press the home button or the navigation bar, and circle or tap the part of the screen you want to search. It works on top of any app, including TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. If your phone does not have it, take a screenshot, open the Google app, tap the camera icon in the search bar and pick the screenshot from your gallery.
iPhone. Take a screenshot of the paused video (side button plus volume up). Then open the Google app, tap the camera icon in the search bar and choose the screenshot. In Chrome for iPhone you can also long-press an image on a web page and choose Search image with Google, but that only works on images, not on a playing video, so the screenshot route is the reliable one.
Menu names change between app versions and countries. If you can't find an option, look for the Lens camera icon; it is the same feature. For more phone tips, see our guide to searching a video from your phone.
Choose good frames and search more than one
The frame you pick decides most of the result. A good frame is:
- —Sharp. Pause on a still moment, not mid-movement or during a transition.
- —Distinctive. A face, a sign, a building, a recognisable object or an unusual scene. A plain sky or a dark room matches thousands of unrelated images.
- —Clean. As little on-screen text, stickers and interface as possible, unless the text is part of the original video.
Then search 3 to 5 different frames from different parts of the video: the opening shot, a moment from the middle, the ending. A copy of the video on another site may be cropped or trimmed, so one frame can miss it while another finds it. Note every useful link as you go. If you need sharper stills than a screenshot gives you, see how to extract frames from a video.
How to read Google Lens results
Lens usually shows a grid of Visual matches: images that look similar. Similar is the key word. Many will be unrelated pictures with the same colours or composition. Depending on your version, you may also see an Exact matches option, which narrows the results to pages that contain the same image. When it is there, it is the most useful view for finding copies of a video.
- —Open the results that clearly show the same scene, not just a similar one. Check the details: the same people, the same background, the same angle.
- —Look at what kind of page it is. A post on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram or X is a copy of the video; a news article may embed it or show a still with context.
- —If Lens shows a text description or a product instead of matches, it has guessed what is in the image rather than looked for copies. Try a different frame or the Exact matches view.
Lens does not tell you when a video was first posted or who made it. To work that out from the copies you find, follow our guide to finding who posted a video first.
Where the frame method falls short
- —One frame per search. Searching five moments means five screenshots, five uploads and five lists of results to compare by hand.
- —Edited copies slip through. Reuploads are often cropped, zoomed, mirrored, given borders or covered in captions. A frame from your version may not match a frame from theirs, and Google may not connect them.
- —Only indexed pages. Google can only show pages it has indexed. Private accounts, deleted posts, closed groups and chat apps are invisible to it, and to any other visual search.
- —Video pages are indexed unevenly. Short-video platforms are covered less completely than ordinary web pages, so a video can exist online and still not appear.
Searching many frames at once
If you want to skip the one-screenshot-at-a-time routine, Retrace does the frame step for you. Upload the video file and it samples up to 24 distinctive frames across the whole clip, searches them visually across the web, and tells you how many matching pages it found and on which platforms. The free scan needs no account. Unlocking a search for $0.90 lists every match with its link, the moment of your clip that matched and how many frames agree.
Uploading the file covers the whole video; pasting a link only analyses the first few seconds. Retrace relies on visual web search too, so it has the same blind spots: it can't see private or deleted posts. For a direct comparison of the two approaches, see Retrace vs Google Lens.