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Google supercharges Circle to Search with Shazam-like powers
- Google has officially announced Circle to Search’s new Music Search feature.
- Music Search lets you search for the song playing on your screen or music playing on nearby speakers.
- We spotted this feature earlier, which had also begun rolling out to some users. Google’s announcement makes the feature official.
Circle to Search has changed the way many recent Android flagship users search on their phones. With Circle to Search, you can quickly and easily search for anything visible on your screen. We spotted Google working on letting users search not just what is visible on their screen with Circle to Search, but also what their phone can hear through the Audio Search feature. Google is now officially announcing the feature as Music Search, and it’s rather neat.
Alongside other Android app announcements, Google has officially announced that Circle to Search’s Music Search feature is now rolling out. Music Search lets you instantly search the songs you are hearing on other apps without switching out of them.
These songs can be from social media apps running on your phone or music playing from speakers near you. Invoking Music Search is as simple as clicking on the music button after invoking Circle to Search, which in turn can be invoked by long-pressing the Home button or the navigation pill.
Once the phone identifies the song, it displays the track name and artist and even links to a YouTube video if you want to explore it further. This makes it easy to add the music you just spotted to a YouTube playlist that you can explore later. Since the feature is app-agnostic, you can use it across social media apps, letting you discover fire mixes from TikTok, Instagram, and others.
Google hasn’t clarified the technical details around how the feature works, but since it says the feature can identify songs playing near you, your phone’s mic is very likely involved. However, that raises the question of whether Music Search will work for social media apps on your phone if your music output volume is zero (since nothing would be audible for the microphone to pick up).
This feature was spotted by us last month, and it had also begun rolling out to users. Google’s official announcement essentially means the feature is here to stay, and all Circle to Search users can look forward to experiencing it on their phones.