Google will soon add a “Get help for the game” button to its Circle to Search feature. As the name suggests, it will make it easier to find solutions when you are stuck on a level.
Circle to search was one of the flagship functions of the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S24 premium smartphones. For those who have never heard of it, remember that it allows you to surround an area of the screen in order to launch a Google search for it. It’s a quick and convenient way to perform a search taking into account everything on the screen, making it more relevant. Google has gradually extended access to this function to Pixel smartphones, and the company has clearly demonstrated its ambition to reach as many users as possible, by integrating the function into different services, such as Google Lens for example. Android Authority spotted, in the APK of version 16.0.7 of the Google application, a new tool called “Get help for the game”, which would make it easier to obtain help for mobile games.
Circle to search: a function soon to be usable in mobile games
This new feature appears just above the search bar at the bottom of the screen. Just press the button to take a screenshot of the current game screen and do a quick Google search with the image and text “Get help for this game”. This could actually be a nice addition, as many people look for game guides when they’re stuck on a level that’s too difficult or a boss that’s too stubborn.
However, this next implementation has some peculiarities. On the one hand, the button was displayed to our colleagues in all applications each time they used the “Circle to search” function. It appears that Google is unable to detect if the user is running a game or other application, but this should be fixed by the official launch of the feature.
Another area for improvement is Google search quality, which can include Reddit posts, YouTube videos, and other websites. If search engine cannot recognize the exact context in which the user is stuck in the game from the screenshot, there is no other choice but to manually refine the search with more text so Google can refine its answers, like the name of the game, etc. It remains to be seen what this will give.