Ryan Haines / Android Authority
TL;DR Circle to Search’s text search feature now defaults to Google’s AI Mode.
Previously, any additional text queries in Circle to Search would default to the standard image search.
The feature was teased in July and is now starting to roll out.
Google’s AI Mode originated as a smarter and resourceful alternative to Search, but has since proliferated to other spots on your phone. A few months ago, Google added a direct AI Mode shortcut under the search bar in the Google app on Android, soon followed by AI Mode being added to Circle to Search for Samsung’s recently launched foldables — which was rolled out to other Android devices shortly after.
Despite this addition, Circle to Search defaulted to regular image search when asked any add-on questions. But this appears to be changing now, with additional queries along with images going to AI Mode, starting the Google app’s version 16.47.49.
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This change introduces a new search bar at the bottom of Circle to Search results, which can be used for additional queries. Although it was teased by Google at the time of the July update, it wasn’t implemented. Instead, we continued to see a search bar at the top of the results, and typing anything would return standard, non-AI results.
Old search bar placement New search bar placement
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