How to enable Circle to Search right now on Pixel phones

If you didn't catch Samsung's launch of the Galaxy S24 series at Unpacked last week, Google announced a new feature called "Circle to Search". You just long press the home button or gesture nav handle to initiate the search overlay and then tap, scribble, or draw a circle around text or images on screen to search it with Google Lens.

The feature is available right now on the Galaxy S24 series (which only reviewers have access to), but Google confirmed it's coming to the Pixel 8 series starting January 31. If you'd rather not wait for the feature to roll out or you want to try it on another Pixel phone, here's how you can enable Circle to Search right now.

(I'd appreciate if you don't share this method outside of my Discord server, since it takes a lot of work to figure out how to enable these kinds of features!)

Enabling the feature right now on the Pixel 8 or Pixel 8 Pro is quite easy, but enabling it on older Pixels is a bit more involved at the moment. This is because Google decided to limit the roll out of this feature to the Pixel 8 series (for marketing/product purposes) despite there being no technical reason it can't run on other currently supported Pixel devices. 

Circle to Search support basically just requires two things: New code that makes it possible to long-press the gesture nav handle and a version of the Google App that contains the new "OmnientActivity" (the activity that launches when you invoke Circle to Search). The former I'm not actually sure is all in AOSP yet, but it is present in the current stable releases for supported Pixel phones. It's also present in the Android 14 QPR2 beta releases for Pixels, of course, but Google seems to have hardcoded it in current builds such that the new long-press gesture can't be enabled via the method I'm sharing in this post. Hence, if you have a Pixel phone on the QPR2 beta, you'll need to wait for possibly the next beta. 

In any case, here's how to enable Circle to Search on your Pixel phone. I've tested this on a Pixel 8 Pro running the Android 14 QPR1 December 2023 release (UQ1A.231205.018) as well as on a Pixel 6 Pro running the Android 14 QPR1 January 2024 release (UQ1A.240105.004).

1) Check what version of the Google App is installed on your phone. The specific version doesn't matter, but it must have "cts" in the version name. ("cts" stands for Circle to Search if it isn't obvious.) If you don't have a version of the Google App with "cts" in its version name already installed (which you probably won't if you aren't on a Pixel 8 or 8 Pro), then you can sideload this bundle I extracted from my S24 Ultra.

2) Run these ADB commands:

adb shell cmd device_config put launcher long_press_home_button_to_search true;adb shell cmd device_config put launcher long_press_home_button_to_search_mpr true;adb shell cmd device_config put launcher press_hold_nav_handle_to_search true;adb shell cmd device_config put launcher press_hold_nav_handle_to_search_mpr true;adb shell cmd device_config put launcher ENABLE_SETTINGS_OSE_CUSTOMIZATIONS true;adb shell cmd device_config put launcher ENABLE_LONG_PRESS_NAV_HANDLE true;adb shell cmd device_config put launcher ENABLE_LONG_PRESS_NAV_HANDLE_MPR true;adb shell cmd device_config put launcher INVOKE_OMNI_LPH true;adb shell cmd device_config put launcher INVOKE_OMNI_LPH_MPR true;adb shell cmd device_config set_sync_disabled_for_tests persistent

It's a lot of commands joined by semicolons, but it basically just flips the DeviceConfig flags that control the Circle to Search feature. (This is how it's possible for Google to roll out CTS on January 31st despite there being no planned OTA update for that date - the feature just needs an updated version of the Google App plus some server-side flags to be flipped to enable the new long-press gesture on Android.)

3) Reboot your phone. After you boot back up, Circle to Search should "just work" if you have a Pixel 8 or 8 Pro and you should see new "hold handle to search" and "hold Home to search" options under Gesture Navigation and Button navigation settings respectively. 

If you have any other Pixel phone, however, CTS won't work unless you change some system properties to spoof the Pixel 8. This is because the Google App immediately closes the CTS activity if it detects that the device isn't a Pixel 8 or 8 Pro. Yes, this is a pretty silly limitation, and one that can only be fixed by rooting your phone and applying the Magisk Module I attached below which makes apps think your phone is a Pixel 8 Pro. I wouldn't recommend keeping it installed, though, since spoofing a different device has some unintended effects, such as changing the models used in Google Camera (and thus crashing it due to incompatibilities).

If I figure out a method to enable CTS on other Pixel phones that doesn't require such an approach, you'll all be the first to know. 

Oh, and if by chance you want to undo the changes mentioned in this post, all you really need to run is this one ADB command:

adb shell cmd device_config set_sync_disabled_for_tests none

And uninstall the Magisk Module if you needed to install that.

Lastly, if you're looking to enable CTS on any other non-Pixel phone, I'm not sure it's possible right now unless your OEM releases an OTA update. That's because the code changes I mentioned before that enable long-pressing the gesture nav handle don't seem to be in the initial release of Android 14, which is what most OEMs forked. They'll likely need to pick some specific patches to enable the feature, which is what I suspect Samsung did in their One UI 6.1 release for the S24 series.