Have you ever wanted to describe something, but can’t quite find the right words to bring your vision to life? Perhaps you’ve been searching for the perfect mug for your Mom in her favorite color, but don’t know how to describe the exact shade. Or you see a unique piece of furniture, and you’re determined to find a small business who can hand make or customize something similar just for you.

Until now, the fastest way to find what you’re looking for on Etsy has been to search keywords, but we know that when inspiration strikes for our users, words aren’t always enough. Now, iOS app users can use images to discover special items on Etsy. Buyers can simply tap the new camera icon in the search bar and upload or take a photo, and Etsy will surface items that are visually similar to the image they shared. And with more than 100 million items in our marketplace, odds are that if you can dream it – or snap a photo of it – you’ll find something you love on Etsy.

We’re always investing in our marketplace to make it easier for sellers to grow their businesses. We’re excited for this new, innovative feature to make it easier for sellers to get discovered and connect with our built-in base of nearly 90 million buyers around the world.

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At Etsy, our teams are focused on making our marketplace more discoverable for buyers looking for something truly unique. One of the things we love most about this feature is that it was developed as part of CodeMosaic, an annual Etsy Hackathon that gives engineers opportunities to flex new skills while building creative solutions to benefit our marketplace and community. This new feature is an employee-led initiative that really demonstrates the talent, agility, and passion of the Etsy team.

We know that buyers often seek shopping inspiration outside of the marketplace, then turn to Etsy to discover items and make purchases. But sometimes they have trouble finding the right words to find the perfect items. That’s why the team built the image search feature from the ground up - leveraging Etsy’s first GPU-backed service - to give these users another, more visual way to make their inspiration a reality.

Developing best in class search and discovery is a key focus for Etsy. We saw encouraging results in early testing of this feature, so we’ve now rolled out the beta to all iOS app users. As we continue to learn and improve the user experience, we hope to expand image search to Android app users soon.