I’ve been tempted to switch to an iPhone a few times. Great cameras, well-crafted hardware, nice ecosystem — there’s much to like. But one unflaggingly transformative Google offering keeps me on Android, and it’s not flashy generative AI. It’s Circle to Search.
Why the one feature matters
Circle to Search couldn’t be simpler: just long-press the browser’s navigation bar, circle anything on a page and quickly do something with it. It merges Google Lens’ visual recognition with on-screen text selection and quick actions, all without making you bounce around to different apps. That one gesture deflates what used to be a string of taps, screenshots and share sheets.
Scale matters, too. Google has said Circle to Search is rolling out to hundreds of millions of Android devices, and the features tied to it — like Lens and Translate — are based on infrastructure that already serves billions of queries a day. Google Research also points out Translate now handles more than 200 languages thanks to a major expansion, which is instantly reflected in the usefulness of this feature.
On‑screen translation that stays on screen
For travelers and polyglot users, Circle to Search’s superpower is instant on‑screen translation. It works in apps with text that are not visible to it — PDFs, in‑app menus, screenshots of posts or social media having posters written in stylized fonts. Choose the characters, and tap Translate, and there’s your result, without shunting content off to some other app.
Google’s more recent Scroll and Translate upgrade is even more frictionless, translating as you scroll long pages. The result is a workflow that gets out of the way. You are spending time to understand what is in front of you, not wrestling tools that barely manage to give you a translation in the first place.
Travel is the stress test
On the road, this feature has saved my sanity. Food delivery apps in Southeast Asia, transit systems in Japan or merchant checkouts even within China are frequently a stew of images and embedded text as well as non-Latin scripts that standard copy‑and‑paste can’t parse. Circle to Search allows me to tap and hold on a line item, translate it at the time of lifting, and even jump to Maps if I highlight an address.
That cuts down on errors — ordering the wrong dish, misinterpreting surcharges, veering off course or heading to the wrong station. With international travel starting to roar back, the United Nations World Tourism Organization has documented continued growth in cross‑border trips, making tools that strip away language barriers at the moment of need all the more powerful.
Apple’s current solution feels patchwork
Apple is moving in the same direction with Apple Intelligence, Visual Look Up and on‑screen awareness, but it doesn’t flow as smoothly. In a lot of cases you still capture a screen shot, Fire up Sir i and maybe pass off to third‑party model for text extracting. In translation, there’s an additional step or even two if you compare it to Circle to Search’s single gesture.
Until you do this dozens of times a day, that doesn’t sound like much. The ideal assistive features are those you never have to think about. As of today, Google’s implementation asks fewer questions and responds faster, particularly with mixed content such as images plus non-selectable text.
Beyond translation: small delights add up
Circle to Search is also a universal Now Playing button, for music recognition (though it’s buried in the now playing remote control interface rather than up front), for product identification while shopping, and for reviews or specs when you circle on a gadget in a video.
Those micro‑wins accumulate. For years, Nielsen Norman Group studies on usability have demonstrated that lower interaction cost (fewer steps to complete a task) is associated with faster perceived speed and with higher user satisfaction.
There are trade‑offs. Starting a selection usually prompts a web lookup by default, and people may not appreciate that in terms of privacy. Pixels do however still have a cleaner looking Recents view to quickly copy without searching. But for how I actually use my phone, Centre-aligned Circle > Search is easier to remember and execute than its opposite, and that consistency across the wider Android ecosystem is more than enough to tip the balance from those quibbles.
The unexpected lock‑in
I used to believe platform lock‑in was about blue bubbles, or exclusive apps, or the communication architecture of camera pipelines. For me, it ended up being around a gesture that makes anything I’m looking at immediately actionable. When a feature eliminates cognitive load and saves you minutes every day, making the switch becomes the greater cost.
Apple will get better at understanding context on the screen — and perhaps the gap will close. Until then, Circle to Search — and particularly that rain drop of a translation feature — is one reason I can’t yet bring myself to make my main phone an iPhone. It’s one of those rare features that feels less like software and more like a reflex.