As part of a settlement between Google and Getty Images, Google has agreed to remove the popular “View Image” button when viewing an image in Google Images. This is a very popular feature that has upset many people who routinely use the Google Images service. 

With this mind, developers decided to create their own browser extensions and addons that can be used to bring back the View Image button to Google Images in both Chrome and Firefox. Once you install them, Google Images will show the View Image button again just like normal.

Getting Google Image’s View Image button back in Chrome & Firefox

If you are a Chrome or Firefox user, we think the best extension to bring back the View Image button is the “View Image” extension. Available for both Chrome and Firefox and currently used by over 300 thousand users, this extension inserts the View Image button in the same spot it was before Google removed it.

Once installed, the View Image button will be back where it used to be as can be seen below. Even better, this extension does not include any tracking code or other undesirable behavior that we commonly see in free extensions. This extension simply does what it states it does, brings back the View Image button in Google images.

There are two issues, though, currently with this extension. The first is a formatting issue where the site name, image size, and the link to search for similar images runs into each other.

The other issue, is that this extension can read all data for virtually all *.google.* hostnames. While this extension does not perform any malicious behavior, it does have the ability to read and modify any content on almost all google.com sites so if this is a security concern, you may want to not use it.