Do you recall Google Now on Tap? For those unfamiliar, Now on Tap was a highly beneficial feature introduced by Google in Android 6.0 Marshmallow. It allowed users to press and hold the home button to analyze the information on their screen. Regrettably, Now on Tap was discontinued following the launch of Google Assistant. Although Assistant retained the capability to search the screen, it wasn’t as conveniently accessible and occasionally vanished altogether. However, there’s good news, as Google is presently developing a new gesture for screen search that pays homage to the days of Now on Tap.
While looking at the first beta of Android 14 QPR1, Android Authority discovered a hidden setting for “hold handle to search”. Turning this on lets you press and hold the navigation handle to search for whatever is on your screen. The setting is currently hidden, but we managed to make it appear under Settings > System > Navigation Mode > Gesture Navigation.
Right now, this doesn’t work, but Google may be building a replacement for Now on Tap.
Before, you could press the home button to get Now on Tap. It would use Google Lens to read text on the screen and give you related search results. This made it easy to find more information without leaving the app. But Now on Tap went away when Google Assistant started.
The assistant could still do screen searches, but it was harder to activate. Sometimes the screen search option would randomly disappear too. Thankfully, the Android 14 QPR1 update hints that screen searches may return in a better way.
By enabling experimental flags, developers gained the ability to long-press the bottom bar for screen searching. It likely will open the Google Assistant screen search tool directly from this gesture. So Google may finally give Now on Tap a proper successor with an easy way to search directly from your current app screen.
Only time will tell if this new gesture works as expected. But it could deliver what users wanted all along—a quick and convenient way to search for what’s on their display without leaving their app. Fans of Now on Tap have hoped for years to see its return, and this may make that possible again soon.
