I can't imagine what would cause the image URL to be loaded in a new tab, because there is no code in the extension that can do what you have described when initiating a search. I'd be happy to debug the issue with you on GitHub, but please share some details about the browser, the search engine and the website or image you're using when you open an issue.

Are you by any chance using a screen reader or keyboard navigation and clicking the "Open image" menu item by mistake, instead of a search engine?

https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image/issues

I'm glad you like the extension! Extensions can only add a single top-level context menu item, but you could disable the rest of the search engines from the extension's options to search with your preferred engine from the context menu, without having to open a submenu. The drawback is that the "Open image" tool would no longer be accessible from the context menu and the browser toolbar.

If you have more than one engine enabled, and you would like to initiate a search with all of them from a top-level context menu item, you could also set the "Search all engines" option to "From context menu". That way the rest of the features would still remain accessible from the browser toolbar popup.

The legacy Google service is still available in the extension, now listed as Google Images (deprecated), but it only works for some users, you can enable it from the extension's options. People in the EU have had some luck restoring access to the service by using a Google account and following this guide: https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image/issues/309.

You can select an area of the web page using the Capture search mode. The search mode can be set independently for the context menu and the browser toolbar from the extension's options.

You could also enable the "Use deep search when selecting images" option to continue searching with the Select URL or Select Image search modes. When enabled, the extension extracts all images from the clicked area, even if an overlay image was immediately found. If multiple images are found, you can select the one you need from a popup that lists the images along with their dimensions.

Hi, I'm happy you find the extension useful! You could also experiment with the options listed below to extract potentially larger versions of the image from the source code of the page. These options are not enabled by default because it takes a bit longer to download all variants of the selected image.

* Use deep search when selecting images
* Detect alternative image sizes