Circle to Search getting transparent navigation bar

Following the extended long-press and boosted vibration, Google’s next update for Circle to Search is a transparent navigation bar for Search results.

Previously, both the bottom sheet and fullscreen results used a solid nav bar.

Solid

We’re now seeing a transparent navigation bar that helps make the results page look as modern as the Circle to Search overlay. This change is very apparent for those using 3-button navigation (which is getting predictive back support in Android 16), while it’s a bit more subtle with Gesture navigation.

The Google app doesn’t do this for Search results due to the persistent bottom bar.

Transparent

Meanwhile, Google is also beginning to show a full-width “Are these results useful?” bar at the bottom. This floating pill for Yes, No, or close comes from Google Lens, and only appears when you expand results to take up the entire screen.

Spotted today, these two changes are appearing with the beta (not stable) version of Google app 16.6 on some Pixel devices we checked today. We’re not seeing this yet on Samsung phones, which would really benefit from this UI tweak as seen in the cover image above.

It joins the Circle to Search updates to the activation gesture from earlier in February, and the bigger bar redesign at the start of this year.