Summary
- Circle to Search could soon allow you to save partial screenshots in a separate collection within the Google app.
- The search gesture might also gain Google Lens features like “listen” and “select all” for improved functionality.
- Circle to Search will soon help with your homework, especially equation solving.
Circle to Search makes searching for on-screen content on your phone easy, including looking up items of interest in a picture, copying text, and more. Since its debut in early 2024, Google has improved the feature by bringing it to more devices and adding a Translate feature. More recently, a report indicated the search gesture could gain barcode scanning support. But that’s not it, as Google appears to be working on several other improvements to Circle to Search, including saving partial screenshots.
5 biggest Google I/O announcements: Circle to Search, Search changes, and lots of AI
This ain’t your dad’s Google
AssembleDebug tore down the v15.20.36.29 Google beta app for Android Authority and enabled the option to save partial screenshots. As the video demo below shows, when you circle an element on your phone’s screen, Circle to Search will show a Save button alongside the usual Copy, Share, and Select text options in the pop-up menu.
The catch is that tapping the button will not save the circled area’s screenshot to your phone’s gallery. Instead, it will be saved to the “uploaded images” collection in the Google app’s Saved tab. You can access the latter section from the Interests page on your PC.
You cannot share individual screenshots but can refer back to them when needed. If needed, you can share a link to the collection with your friends or family, letting them add their own screenshots or images. Admittedly, I am not sure how Google envisions saving your partial screen search would be beneficial, but it might have some use cases in mind.
Circle to Search could gain these Google Lens features
Strings in the latest Google app also indicate that Circle to Search could soon gain “listen” and “select all” functionality from Google Lens. The former is an accessibility feature and should allow you to listen to selected text.
The Select All button should do what its name suggests: highlight and select all content on your phone’s display for easy copy/paste or web search. However, AssembleDebug could not get these features to work, indicating that it is still a work in progress. While minor, these would be handy additions to Circle to Search, making it more accessible and easier to use.
In addition to the above, Google is working on making Circle to Search even more powerful by helping you do your homework, especially solving equations. The company demonstrated this feature at I/O 2024, and it should roll out soon.
