One of the most interesting developments from Google so far this year is Circle to searcha function that came exclusively for the Galaxy S24 family from Samsung in January, but that It is now available on more mobiles. However, all of these devices are Android, Circle to Search is not available for iPhone.
Or at least the same experience as on Android is not available. However, there is a way to do a Rodea-style smart search to search on the iPhone using the Google application. The experience is almost as good as Android’s Rodea for searching, enough for me to use it constantly. And so you can do the same.
How to set up ‘Circle to search’ style searches on the iPhone, and without touching the screen
On Android, Circle to search allows you to perform a search on what we see on the screen, at any time. By just using the gesture (press and hold the gesture bar at the bottom of the screen) we can activate Surround mode to search and draw a circle on what we want to search: an image, text, or anything on the screen.
This is a very useful function, so on iPhone we would like to have something similar. Fortunately, there is a solution, using the Google app and iOS shortcuts. It is not the same experience, since we do not see the same animation nor can we draw a circle around what we want to search on the screen, but it is quite close and offers the same search results.
To configure it, we follow the following steps:
- The first thing we need is to download the Google application from the App Store if we haven’t done it yet
- We access the application Shortcuts on iPhoneavailable in the app library (or you can find it using the Spotlight search bar)
- We select to create a new Shortcut by pressing the cross-shaped button (+)
- Let’s add two actions, in the correct order. The first action is “Take screenshot“. We can search for it using the search bar above all the options
- Then, we add among the available actions, we go to the Google section and select “Search image with Lens“
- Finally, we press OK to finish
It is not the same experience, since we cannot draw a circle on the screen around what we want to search for, but it is quite close and offers the same results
Now, we are going to configure the possibility of searching without touching the screen:
- We go to the iPhone settings menu and then to the section Accessibility
- We access the option Tap
- Then, we click on Touch back
- We have two options: Double tap or Triple tap. We choose the gesture we want to use and we scroll to the end to select the shortcut called “Search image with Lens”
And that’s it. From now on every time we use the gesture (double tap or triple tap on the back of the iPhone) the mobile will take a screenshot and perform a search with Google Lens, similar to how Rodea would do to search on Android. We can also select the exact space in the screenshot that we want to search, whether it is an image or text, for example.
By configuring this shortcut we can use the image search function quickly and without even touching the screen. This doesn’t affect traditional screenshots, so pressing the power button and the volume down button will take a standard screenshot without searching. And of course, if you have a iPhone 15 Pro or a iPhone 15 Pro Maxyou can set the action button to start this shortcut.
Cover photo | Amparo Babiloni for Xataka