When I want to find an app I haven’t pinned to the home screen I swipe up from the bottom of the home screen to bring up a search bar where I can search for an app by name or scroll through list of all apps on the phone.

Thing is the search bar on my new pixel phone is actually a Google search bar that will search apps locally at the same time as providing web results, especially if it can’t find the app by name.

It’s a nice idea in theory but in practice I find it annoying, especially if I’ve just made a typo. Also, I’m just never going to use this search bar for web searching anyway because for that I would want my chosen browser so the web results are of no use to me.

I actually remember my old phone used to do what I wanted it to do, then one day it switched to what my new phone currently does and after a long time I found the solution to return it back to it’s previous behaviour except now I’ve forgotten what I did.

I only want to search my phone’s local storage for apps matching my keyword when I access the app drawer. How do I get rid of this Google search bar? (I’d love to get rid of the Google search bar from the home screen itself as well but I understand I can’t do that without root on stock android.

  • ianovic69
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    01 month ago

    Really? $9.50

    Less than 80 cents equivalent per month.

    Really?

      • ianovic69
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        11 month ago

        I understand the reason but it’s the only one I’ve found that’s actually different and good. Getting away from Nova wasn’t easy, a very small fee is trivial to me for that.

        Besides, do you also not donate to anything else you use regularly or other worthy causes?

          • ianovic69
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            11 month ago

            Technically yes. But you don’t have to pay and the free version is perfectly usable.

            And it’s such a small amount, per year, that you don’t have to pay, in practice it’s more like a donation.

            I agree that you are technically correct, I just don’t think it matters. You are welcome to use it or not, and pay, or not.