Ravue — Visual Search for Firefox Autor: Illustrious

Ravue — Simple visual search, under your control

Ravue makes visual search in Firefox simple, fast, and fully under your control.

Search an image directly from the context menu, open the Ravue panel to select any visible area of a page, or choose “Add an image” to search an image pasted from the clipboard, selected from your computer, or dragged from another source.

For area searches, click to get a suggested selection, or click, hold, and drag to draw an area manually. Adjust the boundaries as needed and confirm only when you are satisfied with the selection.

Each search uses one new tab. While preparing the request and transitioning to Google Lens, Ravue displays a “Preparing your search” screen. When using “Add an image”, the dedicated Ravue page becomes the preparation screen and then Google Lens in the same tab.

Key features

• Extension panel with quick access to the area selector and image input.
• Search images using the “Search this image with Ravue” command.
• Dedicated page for pasting, dropping, or choosing an image from your computer.
• Support for JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP, and AVIF files up to 32 MB.
• Click-based selection suggestions calculated locally.
• Manual click-and-drag selection with repositioning and resizing.
• Right-click to clear the current selection and choose another without closing the selector.
• “Visible page” option to select the entire area currently displayed in the tab, always requiring confirmation before anything is sent.
• Light and dark themes.
• Keyboard navigation.
• Available in English and Brazilian Portuguese.

Click-based suggestions help identify visual boundaries, but they do not use OCR or remote artificial intelligence. They also do not semantically recognize people, animals, or objects. Review the selection boundaries before starting a search.

Privacy and control

For direct image searches, choosing the Ravue command authorizes the search to begin. Whenever possible, the extension uses the image’s original URL, allowing Google to retrieve the file directly from its source instead of relying only on the portion visible on screen.

Image URLs may contain parameters, which Ravue does not automatically remove. Ravue also does not determine whether a resource is publicly accessible. Avoid searching private images or URLs that contain sensitive information.

When an image URL cannot be used directly, the extension may prepare the image locally using available image pixels or a capture permitted by Firefox. If a search using a URL fails after submission, Ravue does not automatically fall back to a new screen capture.

Choosing, dropping, or pasting an image on Ravue’s dedicated image-input page authorizes that image to be used for the requested search. Opening the page, dragging without dropping, pasting content that is not an image, or cancelling the file picker sends nothing.

Eligible JPEG, PNG, and WebP files are preserved without re-encoding when their dimensions and temporary payload size allow it. Other or oversized supported images are prepared locally as still JPEG images, with a maximum dimension of 1200 pixels on the longest side. Conversion may remove animation, transparency, metadata, color-profile information, or fine detail.

When using the area selector, Firefox captures the entire visible area of the tab locally so that you can create a crop. This means the visible viewport is captured before the selected region is extracted. Nothing is sent while you are adjusting the selection.

Only after you confirm does Ravue prepare the selected content and send it to the Google services required to start the visual search in Lens. Choosing “Visible page” selects the complete visible viewport but still requires confirmation before anything is sent.

Crops and other locally prepared alternatives are sent as JPEG images, with a maximum dimension of 1200 pixels on the longest side. Review the content before confirming: personal or sensitive information within the selected area is not automatically hidden or redacted.

Ravue uses temporary session storage and has no intermediary server of its own, no advertising, and no telemetry. Temporary image data and operation records are removed when consumed, completed, closed, or expired.

Content submitted for visual search is processed by Google services and is subject to their terms of service and privacy policies. Google Images and Google Lens may require consent, authentication, CAPTCHA, or other service controls. Ravue does not bypass them.

See the extension’s privacy policy for additional details.

Compatibility

Built with Manifest V3 for Firefox Desktop 142 or later.

The interface follows the Firefox language when English or Brazilian Portuguese is available and supports light and dark appearances.

Search results depend on the availability of Google Images and Google Lens.

Source code

The source code is available for review on GitHub.

The repository is maintained exclusively for transparency and source-code review. It is not used for support requests, bug reports, suggestions, feedback, pull requests, or contributions.

Independence

Ravue is an independent project and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Google or Mozilla.

Google Lens and Firefox are trademarks of their respective owners.