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.

  • nomad@infosec.pub
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    6 months ago

    Graphene OS is a de-googled veraion of android you can install via a simple website. It has the exact feature you are looking for.

    • Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.mlOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      6 months ago

      Planning to switch to Graphene OS for several reasons, but I have a reason why it will be better for me not to do that until a bit later so until then I’m just trying to be comfortable with stock.