Google has brought its popular Circle to Search tool to Apple’s iPhone range – sort of.
The web giant announced Circle to Search at Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked back in January, introducing a brand new way to search the web using whatever’s on the screen at the time.
While the feature has arrived on a number of Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel devices since, we figured it’d be a while until it arrived on iOS – if ever. However, an official update to the Google Lens app on the App Store has essentially added a Circle to Search function for iPhone users.
Google Lens Design Manager Minsang Choi has helpfully posted the shortcut to X.
Google has now issued a new shortcut that takes a screenshot on an iPhone, then sends it off to Google Lens to be analysed for searchable content.
As 9to5Google points out, while there’s nothing quite like the actual Circle to Search motion to activate this on iPhone, it’s a small matter to pin the function to the new Action Button on the iPhone 15 Pro. Alternatively, you can assign the shortcut to the Back Tap gesture on older iPhone models through the Shortcuts app.
If you think the link sounds tenuous, it’s worth noting that Circle to Search is built on the exact same OCR (optical character recognition) technology as Google Lens. All that’s really different following this update is Circle to Search’s neat circle-drawing input system.
