‘Circle to search’, the new Google function that allows us to search for anything that appears in our screen In a few steps, it has been expanding to new devices. It debuted this year on the Samsung Galaxy S24, but is now available on a wide variety of Android smartphones.
The deployment of this novelty in iOS has not been possible due to the restrictions of Apple’s operating system. Google doesn’t have as much freedom to implement features in its apps. However, as reported by 9to5Google, the company has come up with a very interesting alternative for iPhone users.
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The alternative to ‘Circle to search’
Using ‘Surround to search’ on Android is very simple. We can invoke this function by long pressing the home button or the navigation bar. The next step is to circle what we want to search for and that’s it. The alternative for the iPhone, however, can work with the action button or Back Tap option.
The trick is that the Shortcuts application enters the scene, which is responsible for taking a screenshot and sending it to Google Lens so that we can later define the area of the image that is of interest to us to start the search. There are two ways to activate this option, but which one to choose will depend on your iPhone model.
If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or higher, you will need to choose the action button path. If you have an iPhone 8 or later with the latest version of iOS, you will need to choose the Back Tap path.
Steps to follow on an iPhone with an action button
Steps to follow on an iPhone with Back Tap
The next step is to start using this great option. Simply press and hold the action button or double or triple tap the back of the iPhone to run the shortcut “Search your screenshot”. Then define the area of interest of the capture to see the search results.
It should be noted that Google Lens also allows you to highlight the text of the capture and even translate it into different languages. As we can see, this alternative does not have the ability to select elements with a circle, but it offers an experience quite similar to that of ‘Circle to search’ available on Android devices.
Images | The Sun Feyissa | Svstudioart | Mia Baker
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