The Google Thanos Snap Easter Egg
The Thanos snap was a Google easter egg from April 2019 to 2023: searching "Thanos" showed a small Infinity Gauntlet in the knowledge panel, and clicking it made half the search results crumble into dust, one by one, with the result count halving. Google removed it in 2023; the panel below recreates the effect.
Updated
What it did
Search Thanos in the weeks after Avengers: Endgame opened in April 2019 and the knowledge panel on the right carried a small golden Infinity Gauntlet. Click it and the fingers snapped, the sound played, and the search results began to disintegrate — each one breaking into drifting particles that blew away over a few seconds until exactly half of them were gone. The result count at the top of the page halved too. Click the gauntlet again and the Time Stone ran the whole thing backwards.
It was one of the most shared Google tricks ever made, partly because it was interactive — most easter eggs simply happen — and partly because it was faithful to the film's effect down to the dust.
- Trigger
- Search "Thanos", click the gauntlet
- Live
- April 2019 – 2023
- Effect
- Half the results dissolve; result count halves; reversible
- Status
- Removed by Google
Why it's gone
Google retires promotional easter eggs without announcement, and this one was tied to a specific film. Users noticed it missing in 2023; searching "Thanos" now returns an ordinary knowledge panel. The Marvel tie-ins that followed it — Wanda's hex, Loki's time slips — were shorter-lived still. The gauntlet survives in screen recordings and in recreations like the one above.
How the effect was built
Each result block was drawn to an off-screen canvas and its pixels distributed across several transparent layers at random. Those layers were then animated with a slight upward drift, a small rotation, a blur, and fading opacity, each starting a little later than the last, so the block appeared to crumble from one side. Fan versions on GitHub reproduce it almost exactly; the demo on this page uses a simplified single-layer version so it stays light.
More Google easter eggs
- Do a barrel roll — the page spins.
- Askew — the page tilts.
- Google Gravity — the page falls apart.
- Every playable hidden game, on the Google games hub.
Frequently asked questions
Does the Thanos snap still work on Google?
No. Searching "Thanos" in 2023 and later shows a normal knowledge panel with no gauntlet. The easter egg ran from the release of Avengers: Endgame in April 2019 until sometime in 2023.
What did the Google Thanos easter egg do?
A gauntlet icon appeared in the Thanos knowledge panel. Clicking it played a snap sound, and half of the results on the page dissolved into drifting dust one after another, the 'About X results' line dropped to half, and the page count shrank. Clicking the gauntlet a second time ran the Time Stone animation in reverse and brought everything back.
Why did Google remove the Thanos snap?
Google did not say. Film tie-in easter eggs are generally temporary; this one outlived most, and was removed along with other Marvel-related search features as the promotion aged.
How was the dust effect made?
Each result was rendered into a canvas, split into several layers of pixels, and those layers were animated apart with slight rotation, blur and a staggered delay — the same approach fan recreations use, and the one this page's demo uses in simplified form.
