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Circle to Search is great, and very much a continuation of Now on Tap that Google should have kept prominently as a core Android experience instead of relegating it to Assistant for a few years, but the way you launch it with navigation gestures is driving me crazy.
I had questions the moment I discovered that you started Circle to search by holding down the gesture navigation bar. That handle, although wide, is very short. How could that be a good touch target?
After using it for quite a while, I never physically miss the general gesture bar area, but I accidentally activate the Recents menu all the time. It feels like my thumb drags up from the bottom of the screen (must be millimeters) before I start holding, but that’s enough to start taking me out of the app and into multitasking.
That swipe up gesture is deeply ingrained in modern Android. Fortunately, I can back out, but the frequency with which this happens is annoying.
Circle to Search seemed to have been created for an era where 3-button navigation is the norm and remains the default option on Samsung devices. (Even there, I’m surprised that Google decided that Circle to Search justifies replacing the home button press for Assistant. It feels like a shocking behavior change that speaks to how the voice assistant’s stature has fallen.)
My preferred solution at this point would be to set one of the diagonal swipes to Circle for Search, while the other remains reserved for Assistant. I have always liked this gesture, but it seems that Google doesn’t and never talks about it. Instead, the company wants you to start Assistant by holding down the power or “Hey Google” button. I’m not a fan of physically launching Assistant – Google should require larger buttons if it wants to enforce this behavior.
Otherwise, CTS is still excellent, especially for copying text with optical character recognition. The actual experience is quite nice, from all the animations to details like being able to scroll up in the search bar. First of all, that’s how you get to it.
Hopefully I’ll get used to launching it via gesture navigation, but I hope Google takes another look at it as Circle to Search is clearly here for the long haul.
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