My favorite circle to search feature is also the most underrated

While Google’s Circle to Search is a useful tool in theory, I think that in practice, results vary considerably. Sometimes the answers it gives me are absolutely correct, and sometimes, they are extremely inconsistent. As a result, Circle to Search has become one of those tools that I don’t really use that much, despite all of its advertised benefits. That is, with the exception of one very useful feature that I’m using more and more every day.

Circle Two Search is generally good at identifying products available online, but when it comes to identifying other items, my experience has been mixed. It’s possible this is because I’m in a non-Western market, as the LLM training data appears to be skewed toward the US, Europe, and other Western regions.

I’ve used Circle Two Search to identify plants, insects, phone models, and more. I also tested it to see if it could identify my cat’s breed. Often, this does not give correct results. It often misidentifies plants in my garden, picking up species from different regions around the world.

When I tried to use it to help identify a pest infesting one of my plants, it gave a different answer every time. The first time, it told me they were zombie ants – so I thought I had one the last of us Situation in my garden. The only way to get an answer was to ask me Android Authority Using colleagues and a photo on a local website they figured out they were lantana bugs.

Circle Two Search also believes that my HONOR 400 Pro is an iPhone, I realized this after some readers accused me of using an Apple device in some of my photos. And when it comes to my cat, Circle to Search thinks her unusual ears are a result of her being a Scottish Fold or some other breed with folded ears. However, this is due to partial pinnectomy. You can tell by the shape of his face and eyes that he is not a Scottish Fold or one of these folded pure breeds.

Overall, since the accuracy of Circle to Search isn’t great, I don’t find myself using it that much.

However, there is one exception. Circle to Search is currently the easiest way to copy text in apps that don’t allow you to easily select parts of messages. I experienced this most with WhatsApp and Slack, as both apps only let you copy an entire message. But when I press the Home button to activate Circle to Search, I can highlight individual pieces of text and copy them to my clipboard.

I first tried it at a local Pokémon GO community group. In groups, we include our in-game name and friend code as member tags to make it easy to add each other for raids. However, WhatsApp does not allow you to copy member tags. Tapping on them opens the person’s profile. We realized that by enabling Circle to Search, we could easily copy each other’s friend codes. I didn’t even need to circle the text I wanted to copy. Simply tapping on it was enough for me to select it for the overlay.

I’ve tried this trick in other apps where it’s not always possible to select text. This works for search engine previews you might not normally select, social media posts, tasks in apps, and more. You can also use it to select text in images. Essentially, Circle 2 Search enables on-demand OCR. Because it’s tied to the home button shortcut on Android, it’s also incredibly easy to activate.

Since Circle to Search is available on most new Android phones, this is a trick you can try even if you don’t have a Pixel. In fact, non-Pixel owners will benefit from it the most. On Pixel phones, you can already select text using the app switcher UI. But that feature is not available on other Android devices.

While a simple OCR screen reader isn’t a feature that attracts as much hype as pulling product recommendations from an image or translating text from another language, this simple feature is the one I actually use the most. Unlike image recognition, it is also one that has a much lower probability of errors. I have yet to find any instances where Circle to Search misread the text I was selecting and copying. Simplicity and reliability are the recipe for success in this matter.