After being part of the AI-related features introduced for the Galaxy S24 family, Samsung’s highly-touted Circle to Search feature quickly lost its exclusivity. The day after the S24 announcement, Google casually unveiled the same feature for its Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.

Reports on Reddit indicated that Google’s Circle to Search started rolling out on January 31 and is now available on both the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. This update seems to be a server-side switch rather than a firmware update.

Users of Google’s latest smartphones may not receive any indication that Circle to Search is live. They can simply test it out to see if it works. Circle to Search can be activated by long-pressing the navigation bar and then circling and highlighting items on the screen. It offers a faster and easier experience than Google Lens, utilizing the same backend to support multimodal search queries.