Home > Lifestyle

How to Use Nano Banana in Google Gemini and Google Lens

By Sayak Boral
Featured Image: Nano Banana an image-generation model in Google Gemini.

Imagine you have a magic camera-like feature on your phone that can instantly turn a regular picture into something cool, like placing you on a beach with a silly hat next to a celebrity or turning your combined selfies into a 3D action figurine. Nano Banana is a versatile image editing model in Gemini that does these things and more. Learn how to access it in the Google Gemini app and Google Lens.

What Is Nano Banana in Google Gemini?

There is no feature or button named Nano Banana in the Gemini app! Rather, “Google 2.5 Flash Image” is a text-to-image prompting solution. The banana icon craze started on LMArena, an AI testing platform. Its “banana” name stuck, and the model’s popularity soared in September 2025, with the Gemini app surpassing 10 million downloads and over 200 million edited images.

While text-to-image editing software has always been around, the capabilities of Gemini’s Nano Banana are far more refined. Like most other image editing programs, it supports natural language editing. Above and beyond, the new model can do the following:

  • Sequential image edits: simple text prompts can add, remove, or modify elements, without altering the entire image background.
  • Subject uniformity: maintains the same character and object likeness across multiple iterations.
  • Multi-image composition: blending multiple images for a singular style.
  • Small iterative refinements: several small prompts give you the perfect image.
  • Multimodal design: can apply contextual reasoning to place text or logos inside predefined objects.

For some time, Nano Banana made Gemini the number 1 app on the App Store. On the latest Android devices, Gemini is deeply integrated, but you can opt out easily.

Using Nano Banana in Google Gemini App (Android/iOS)

To use Nano Banana in the Google Gemini app on Android or iOS, follow the steps shown here.

Sign in with your Gmail account to the Google Gemini app on your device. If you’ve disabled Gemini previously, you need to enable it again. Make sure you have the default mode, Gemini 2.5 Flash, enabled.

Gemini 2.5 Flash enabled as default in Gemini app (Android)

Click + to upload an image from the camera (by taking a selfie), your phone image gallery, files, or Google Drive.

Various sources of uploading image to Gemini: Camera, gallery, files, Drive.



Click Agree on the pop-up to avoid copyright issues. The images you capture with your own camera are generally safe to use.

Content form submission in Gemini app Android for copyright reasons.

In the following example, we are testing multi-image composition, a key feature of Nano Banana. The text prompt tells the AI to move only one element, a coffee cup from the first image, to an empty table in the second image.

Transferring an image element (coffee cup) into a table in the second image with Gemini 2.5 Flash Nano Banana.

Wait a few seconds for the image to generate itself while presented with text-to-image prompts.

Wait a while for Gemini to generate a composite image for only one select element using Nano Banana (Android).

The coffee cup element has been seamlessly transferred into the new image’s background without disturbing any other element. It has a non-erasable SynthID watermark by Google DeepMind to indicate AI creation.

You can use sequential image edits, such as replacing the created image with a new element, like a new coffee cup.

Coffee cup element transferred from one image to another in Gemini app using Nano Banana.

Good to know: Google isn’t the only one in the AI image generation game. Even open-source players like LibreOffice are creating stunning visuals with Stable Diffusion.

Using Nano Banana With Google Lens and AI Mode in Google Search

Apart from the Gemini app, Nano Banana is currently available with Google Lens and AI mode. As of now, it’s rolling out to a few select few, such as the United States and India, but will be available soon everywhere.

Go to the Google Search app on your mobile device. Click the Google Lens text option to launch your camera in the familiar Google Lens mode. You should see a prominent banana icon labeled Create.

Create button in Google Lens app in camera mode (Android) with a banana icon visible.

As soon as you hit Create, the camera shutter button transforms into a “banana” icon. Of course, it can be used to take selfies, then change them into superhero 3D avatars. Nano Banana will prompt you for more ideas.

Android camera shutter button in Lens app transformed into a banana icon.

Google Lens can also work with the images and videos stored on your phone. For that, give Google Search permission to your private photos. (It can be removed later.)

Allowing Google to access photos and videos with Google Lens app in the background (Android).

Open your image gallery, and select any photo to import into Lens. In this case, I chose a Weizen beer glass in the top-left corner.

Selecting an uploaded image in Google Lens (Android): weizen beer glass.

You will automatically enter the Google search AI mode. Make any change you want to the uploaded image. In this example, I am entering the prompt, “put the image in a bar,” to test the app’s multimodal design capability.

Entering a text prompt with uploaded image in Google Search for Nano Banana effect (Android).

The AI Mode takes a few seconds for the image uploaded to get the Nano Banana effect.

In AI mode (Android), Google Search inserts uploaded image to a Nano Banana like text prompt.

The final composite image will be ready. It features a prominent, non-erasable SynthID watermark.

Final composite image is ready showcasing an uploaded image in a new background in AI Mode of Google Search.

Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (Nano Banana) is nothing short of a revolution in AI image editing. It transcends all previous limitations in creating AI images that very closely resemble the real ones. Google may introduce Nano Banana to more applications, such as Google Photos.

Of course, the close resemblance to real images raises many ethical aspects. Check out our deepfake detection guide to learn more. You can further detect AI-generated text in articles and online content using informed guesses and visual clues.

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Sayak Boral Avatar
Sayak Boral
Sayak Boral is a technology writer with over eleven years of experience working in different industries including semiconductors, IoT, enterprise IT, telecommunications OSS/BSS, and network security. He has been writing for MakeTechEasier on a wide range of technical topics including Windows, Android, Internet, Hardware Guides, Browsers, Software Tools, and Product Reviews.

Read next

In 2016, archaeologists dated two rings of snapped stalagmites in France’s Bruniquel Cave to 176,500 years ago, evidence that Neanderthals had walked 336 metres into darkness with fire and built architecture deep underground long before modern humans reached Europe
Otto von Bismarck was 74 when Germany adopted the world’s first national old-age social insurance program in 1889, setting the pension age at 70 after years of fighting socialists with bans, laws, and a promise few workers would live long enough to use
When cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov stepped out of his Soyuz capsule in March 1995 after 437 consecutive days aboard Mir, doctors recorded him at several centimetres above his pre-flight height, and his spine had become so unaccustomed to gravity that the recovery team carried him to a chair rather than risk the compression of letting him walk.
A contemplative scene with two scientists in a vintage laboratory setting.
When Harvard astronomer Cecilia Payne submitted her 1925 doctoral thesis arguing that the Sun was made almost entirely of hydrogen, the field’s senior figure Henry Norris Russell talked her into adding a line calling the result ‘almost certainly not real,’ and then published the same conclusion himself four years later to widespread acclaim.
When Edme Mariotte stared at marks on a wall in the 1660s, one mark vanished inside a six-degree hole where the optic nerve leaves the eye and the brain has been filling in wallpaper, sky, and faces ever since
When seismic waves from the Chicxulub impact reached what is now North Dakota roughly ten minutes after the asteroid struck, they appear to have triggered a ten-metre standing wave in an inland river that flung fish onto the bank and buried them under glass beads still falling from the sky.
When survivors near Lake Nyos woke on the morning of 22 August 1986, the cattle were dead in the fields, the birds had fallen out of the trees, and 1,746 of their neighbours were lying where they had stood the night before, with no fire, no flood, and no wound to explain it.
In 1959, a Soviet research team in Novosibirsk began breeding silver foxes for nothing but tameness, and within forty generations the animals had floppy ears, curled tails, piebald coats, and a bark, traits no one had selected for but which appeared on their own once fear was removed.