Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Unpacked event was all about AI, andCircle to Searchwas the star of the show. The feature offers a quick way to get more information about certain things on your screen. The feature will be exclusive to theSamsung Galaxy S24and Pixel 8 series at the start, but it’s poised to have a ripple effect across Samsung’s entire line of recent flagships. to streamline the process of triggering Circle to Search, Samsung has removed a popular setting from One UI 6.1, whichis coming to older phonesthat won’t see the new search feature initially. This understandably has some usersin an uproar, but thankfully, there’s a relatively simple fix.
If you’re using button navigation on your Galaxy, triggering Circle to Search is simple — just long-press your home button, and instead of Google Assistant popping up (which is now accessed by long-pressing the side key), you’ll be able to circle any element on your screen to learn more about it. But for those who use Android’s gesture navigation system, a new shortcut was created where you long-press the gesture indicator at the bottom of the screen to trigger Circle to Search.
To accommodate this new shortcut, One UI 6.1 has removed the setting that allowed you to hide the gesture indicator, at least on the Galaxy S24, and presumably on other devices receiving the update. Thankfully,BDTech on Twitter/Xhas shared a workaround that can be used to hide the gesture indicator again. Since the instructions span multiple tweets, we’ll include the full list below, edited for clarity.
How to disable the gesture bar from your PC or laptop
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How to disable the gesture bar from your phone
If you don’t have a computer, you can still disable your phone’s gesture bar. You’ll need to enable Android’s wireless debugging feature and downloadShizukufrom the Google Play Store. The steps for that process should be as follows:
Funny enough, Circle to Search still works exactly the same even with the gesture bar disabled — just long-press the same area at the bottom of your screen to trigger the feature. And for older phones that receive the One UI 6.1 update without access to Circle to Search, the above steps should restore the nav bar-free look and functionality of One UI 6. All of this begs the question: was Circle to Search even worth the hassle?
Circle to Search isn’t the only image-based search tool
While phone manufacturers and developers are going all in on AI this year, we’ve been using AI tech on our phones for years. BothGoogle Lensand Google Photos usevision modelsto identify objects. If you haven’t usedGoogle Lens, our top tipswill help you get acquainted with the app in minutes.
