With just a few simple steps, you can bring the highly popular AI-powered Circle to Search feature to your older smartphone.
In recent years, AI-based features have become widely integrated into smartphones. If you’re a tech enthusiast, you’ve likely heard of Circle to Search, one of the most significant among them.
Based on personal experience and existing evidence, most users with AI-capable phones use Circle to Search more than any other feature. Thanks to this feature, users can hold the home button and draw a circle around anything on the screen to instantly get tons of information. It’s even become a professional-grade tool for search and music recognition.
Many people currently own relatively new smartphones that unfortunately don’t support this beloved feature. Fortunately, there’s a solution to bring Circle to Search to such devices.
Of course, there are some basic requirements for enabling Circle to Search on unsupported devices, but the process is not difficult. Here are the prerequisites:
- A device running Android 9 to 15
- The latest version of the Google app
- Google set as the default voice assistant (usually set by default)
- Download and install the MiCTS app
Note: The app we’ll introduce below does not require root access, although it works more reliably on rooted devices. There’s no absolute guarantee that this method will work on every phone—even two phones of the same model might behave differently.
The Critical Step After Installing MiCTS
After installing MiCTS:
- If tapping on it brings up the familiar Circle to Search UI, then you’re 80% done—great news.
- If tapping the app shows nothing or only a quick flash, your phone likely needs to be rooted for it to work.
You can easily download MiCTS from GitHub:
In several of our tests, we found that MiCTS is more likely to work on phones running Android 13 and above.
How to Enable Circle to Search on Incompatible Samsung Phones
If MiCTS runs on your Samsung phone, you have several ways to personalize how Circle to Search is triggered—getting you very close to a flagship-like experience.
Trigger Circle to Search with the Power Button
Many Samsung phones let you assign custom actions to the Power (Side) button, including launching third-party apps like MiCTS.
To set this up:
- Go to Settings > Advanced features
- Select Side button
- Enable Double press and tap on it
- Choose Apps, then select MiCTS
Now, double-pressing the power button from anywhere will launch Circle to Search.
Trigger Circle to Search via Edge Panel
Samsung’s Edge Panel also gives you quick access to Circle to Search:
- Go to Settings > Display
- Scroll down and enable Edge panels
- Pull out the panel, tap the pencil icon, and add MiCTS to the list
Trigger Circle to Search with Good Lock
If your Samsung device supports Modes and Routines and the Good Lock app, you can customize the Circle to Search experience even further:
- Install and open Good Lock
- Download the + Routines module
- Exit Good Lock
- Go to Settings > Modes and Routines
- Open the Routines tab and tap the “+” button
- Under If, tap “+”, search and select Button action
- Choose which button (Power, Volume Up/Down) and how it should trigger (double press or press-and-hold)
- Under Then, tap “+” and search for Open an app or do an app action
- Search and select Open MiCTS
- Tap Save, choose a name and icon, and tap Done
You can now activate Circle to Search with your preferred button and gesture. If you still use the traditional 3-button navigation, you can even assign Circle to Search to those buttons.
The advantage of using Good Lock over the Power button is flexibility. For example, you can assign Circle to Search to the Volume Down button, and use the Power button to launch Google Gemini instead.
Lastly, Circle to Search can also be added to the Quick Settings panel, but this method is less convenient compared to the others.
How to Enable Circle to Search on Incompatible Xiaomi Phones
The most important requirement for Xiaomi devices, just like Samsung, is that MiCTS must be able to run.
If MiCTS works on your Xiaomi phone, there’s one main way to use Circle to Search—though it’s not as smooth as on Samsung devices.
Trigger Circle to Search with Sidebar
Xiaomi phones lack built-in button customization options, so the most reliable way (based on our tests) is using the Sidebar:
- Go to Settings > Additional Settings
- Scroll down and select Floating windows
- Enable Sidebar, and make sure to turn on Always show
- Swipe out the Sidebar and add MiCTS (or Circle to Search) to the app list
Now, you can access Circle to Search from anywhere via the Sidebar. While it’s possible to add Circle to Search to the Quick Settings panel as well, our tests showed bugs with this method—at least on devices like the POCO X6 Pro.
We hope these methods help you bring Circle to Search to your device. Many users consider it the crown jewel of AI-powered smartphone features, and major tech brands proudly highlight it in their promotional materials.
