Google Announces ‘Circle to Search’ for Easy Visual Search on Android

Google is rolling out a new ‘Circle to Search’ feature which will let users select parts of any image that they want to search for. Rather than pasting or uploading an entire photo, users will be able to highlight just a part of whatever is on their screen within any app, for example an item of clothing on a person in a social media post, or a specific part of a captured photo. This will help Google focus its search results on the item a user wants to find out about, saving them the need to crop or reframe an image before putting it through Google’s image search. 

A ‘Circle to Search’ action can be triggered from within any app by long-pressing Home button (or navigation bar). Despite the name, users can also tap a part of their screen, highlight something specific, or scribble with a finger or stylus, to trigger the focused search. Integrating this feature into the Android OS makes it quicker and easier to use Google Search without interrupting what you’re doing to switch to another app. 

This feature will be available on the Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro as well as the newly announced Samsung Galaxy S24 series, starting January 31, in all countries where they are available and in all supported languages. The feature will also roll out to more flagship-class Android smartphones in the near future. 

In addition, Google has updated its Multisearch feature which allows people to add text to an image search to focus the results they get on specific concepts or ideas. According to the company, Multisearch now leverages Google’s in-house AI capabilities to understand the context of a complex question so that results beyond just visual matches can be surfaced. Google offers the example of taking a photo of a type of food and asking “Why is this popular?” to learn why it’s trending, rather than just see general information or recipes.