Google has found a way to bring a variation of the Circle in Search smart gesture to iPhone users. The new interaction, launched in January, lets Android users search from anywhere on their device by circling, highlighting, scribbles or tapping, making it easy to interact with Google Search from any screen. Of course, a similar option was not available to iPhone users, as Google does not control the iOS operating system as it does on Android. To solve this problem, Google is now using Apple’s Action Button on iPhone 15 Pro devices to enable a quick way to visually search for anything on your screen with the press of a button.
No longer just a ring/silent switch, the Action Button allows users to customize the functionality of the iPhone’s side button to their own needs. It can be set to launch the camera, translate a conversation, activate a focus mode, launch the lens, and more. Or, users can assign their own shortcut to the Action Button to initiate another task, such as starting a ChatGPT voice session.
In Google’s case, the company released a shortcut that allows iPhone users to launch a visual search through Google Lens.
“Search is basically circular, but faster!” noted Google Lens design director Minsang Choi on a now deleted post on X, where he introduced the shortcut created by the Google App iOS team. (Apparently, this was an unauthorized release. We’ve asked Google to comment on the removal.)
While Google’s iOS app already offers a way to use Lens for visual search, the addition of the shortcut makes it easier to start a search with a simple swipe, similar to Android. However, it also highlights the difficulties involved in trying to innovate new ways of interacting with technology when creating for iOS: a workaround instead of a gesture had to be used.
To use the shortcut, iPhone users will need to have the Google iOS app installed, then download the shortcut and assign it to the Action Button from iOS Settings. Although Choi’s link to the shortcut has been pulled, there’s still a way to go.
From the iOS Shortcuts app, create a shortcut that first takes a screenshot and then performs the “Find Image with Lens” action, as shown in the example below. This essentially mimics the Circle with Search feature, but uses Google Lens on the iPhone.
9to5Mac, which was the first to spot the release, also noted there is a way to configure the Back Tap Accessibility feature to launch the new shortcut if you are not using an iPhone 15 Pro device.
