How to Use Pixel AI Features on iOS

With the recent launch of the iPhone 16 I thought it would be great to try and find workarounds to the AI feature gaps that iOS has, especially for people switching from an Android device.

Here’s how to set up an iPhone and get some of the most popular smarts from a Pixel phone: Circle to Search, Google Lens, Gemini and even Work profiles.

Circle to Search on any screen

Pixel devices come with out-of-the-box integration with Google services like Gmail, Google Maps, Gemini, etc. Fortunately, all of these services and apps are also available for iOS, and while Apple only allows switching defaults for the web browser and mail apps, you can pretty easily ignore Apple’s stock apps.

But what about deeper integrated features like Circle to Search? Being able to search the content of your screen, regardless of the app that you are seeing, is extremely powerful. You can use it to select any text you see –even inside an image–, or to look for a place that you like on social media, or to search for and buy the clothes that someone is wearing on a video, etc. There are infinite use cases.

The workaround to get this on iOS has three components: the iPhone’s Action button, the regular Google search app –which comes bundled with Google Lens–, and one of the most useful features on iOS, the Shortcuts app.

Emulating Circle to Search is as simple as installing the Google app, and then creating a shortcut that automates the following flow: take a screenshot and pass it to Google Lens. If you prefer to import this shortcut, you can simply tap this link directly from your iPhone. All you have to do in order to easily trigger the shortcut is to assign it to the Action button:

With iOS 18, shortcuts can also be added to the customizable Control Center, so Circle to Search is available even on iPhones without the Action button.

Visual Intelligence powered by Google Lens

One of the most surprising announcements from Apple’s iPhone 16 event was Visual Intelligence: a multimodal AI feature that can help users get answers in a visual way. In the demo, Visual Intelligence was used to get information about a restaurant and to figure out the breed of a dog. The AI model processed both voice and image input and provided answers instantaneously.

Unfortunately, Visual Intelligence won’t be available for a while. Apple will not be ready to release its Apple Intelligence features until later this fall –even though it was one of the biggest highlights of the iPhone 16 launch–. The good news is that all of the scenarios demoed during the official presentation can already be solved using Google Lens.

Triggering this variant of Visual Intelligence powered by Google Lens is as easy as enabling the Back Tap Accessibility action. This lets you run a shortcut when you double-tap or triple-tap the back of your iPhone.

To get started, create a new shortcut that simply launches Google Lens. Then, navigate to the Touch Accessibility settings menu, enable Back Tap, and select your Google Lens shortcut. You can see detailed instructions here.

With this easy access to Google Lens, you can get answers to pretty much any question. You can use it to identify animals or plants, find local information, scan QR codes, translate text in real-time, solve math problems, and much more. No need to wait for Apple Intelligence.

Chat with Gemini

Having a conversation with LLMs like ChatGPT or Gemini has become a very common thing these days. It’s a convenient way of learning something quickly and in a very intuitive way. Gemini is easily accessible on Pixel phones, and Apple promises that the iPhone 16 will get Apple Intelligence with ChatGPT integration –Apple’s response to the LLM craze– at some point in early 2025.

But like with the Visual Intelligence workaround above, there is no need to wait for Apple Intelligence to enjoy some good AI conversations.

First, create a new shortcut on the Shortcuts app and search for the “Open URLs” action. Then, type exactly “googleapp://robin” as the URL to open, which will launch the Google search app directly with Gemini enabled.

You can rename your shortcut as “Gemini” and set it to trigger from a Triple Back Tap, a Control Center shortcut, a Home Screen icon, or even from your Action button if you use Gemini more often than Circle to Search.

Work profiles (sort of)

I recently wrote about the top 3 improvements that I would bring to a future iPhone. Some of those improvements might never see the light of day, but that shouldn’t stop you from properly separating your work from your personal life.

On Android, profiles allow users to install the same app twice. This helps keep work content separate from personal content. That means different widgets, different notifications, different placement of the app icon, etc.

Since iOS doesn’t allow installing the same app again, the best way to replicate this behavior on iPhone is by using different apps for personal and work accounts. For example, Gmail for your personal email account and Apple Mail for your work account. Same with Google Calendar and Apple Calendar.

Once both apps are set up with their respective accounts, set work apps and their widgets on their own Home Screen page. Then, create a new Focus –let’s call it “Out of office”– that silences notifications from the work apps, and hides the Home Screen with all the work content.

Similar to a work profile on Android, you can manually enable the “Out of office” focus on your iPhone to stop seeing any work-related content. You can combine this with a “Work” focus that shows specific work-related widgets on the Lock Screen and automatically gets enabled during working hours:

If you only want to disable the “work profile” and hide work-related content during your scheduled vacations, you can create an automation that gets your calendar events, and only enables the “Out of office” focus if it detects an event with the title “Vacation”.

What you’ll still miss

Even with the workarounds above, there are many more smart features on Android that cannot be ported to iPhone. For example, one of the most treasured features from Pixel phones is having Google Assistant screen phone calls from unknown callers, or filter spam messages automatically.

Nonetheless, the tactics mentioned here show that it’s increasingly easy to use the same services on your smartphone, regardless of the brand that you choose to buy. The key is to avoid getting locked in a specific ecosystem –like I did three years ago–, or to break free if you are already trapped. It’s never too late!

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