Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Our teardown of the latest Google app beta reveals that Google is testing more changes to the Circle to Search UI.
- The Translate shortcut following a selection may move to a more prominent spot.
- A new “Change selection” button would appear in the same section after you’ve searched.
Circle to Search has quickly become one of Google’s most recognizable features, offering a simple way to look up anything on your screen with a quick gesture. Since launching early last year, it’s steadily gained new tricks like song recognition and one-tap translations, but Google isn’t done fine-tuning the interface.
While digging into the latest Google app beta (v16.34.58), we managed to enable two subtle changes. The first is a translate button that appears in the header after you circle something. The button itself isn’t new, as we saw Google add a way to translate your selection earlier in the summer, but it has been repositioned in the pull-up header so it’s more visible and easier to tap right away.
The other addition is a “Change selection” option in the same header section after you draw your circle. It doesn’t add much in terms of new functionality, since you can already swipe back to redo a selection. However, having a clearly labeled button instead of relying on swipes could improve the natural flow as you refine your visual search. You can see both changes in the video demonstration above.
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These tweaks aren’t live for everyone yet, and there’s no guarantee they’ll roll out to the public. Still, they show Google continues to polish Circle to Search as more people get to grips with the utility of the feature.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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