Google’s Circle to Search feature can now be used on an iPhone using a simple workaround. The feature, which allows users to directly search for any item on their phone’s screen, was first made available on the Pixel 8 Series and was slowly rolled out to other flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. Here’s how you can use it on any iPhone.
Use Circle to Search on any iPhone
The latest version of the Google Search app for iOS allows users to create a “Search Your Screenshot” shortcut that takes a screenshot on their iPhone and sends it to Google Lens to analyze it. The Lens section provides relevant search results based on the contents in the screenshot, and users can also set the lens to focus on a specific area of the screenshot, similar to Circle to Search.
Users with an iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max can configure the Action Button to activate the “Search Your Screenshot” feature using Google Lens. Other iPhone models can also use the same feature by setting up alternative shortcuts, such as the back tap gesture. Here’s how you can do that.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone, and go to Accessibility > Touch.
- Search for the Back Tap option.
- Choose your gesture between double tap or triple tap to trigger the shortcut.
- Now scroll and select Search your Screenshot.
Once done, the selected gesture will automatically take a screenshot on your iPhone, which will instantly open in the Google Lens app. The Lens app uses OCR, which can be used to copy text, translate, or even search for any image displayed on the screen.
It is worth noting that the actual Circle to Search feature on Android devices offers a much better user interface, compared to the new Google Lens turnaround on iPhones. However, this new shortcut is helpful for iOS users to quickly search for any stuff visible on their iPhone’s screen.
From our initial testing of this feature, we found that this shortcut is quite useful on the latest iPhone 15 Pro and the 15 Pro Max with the Action Button. However, the Back Tap gesture can be useful too.
