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.

  • unmagical@lemmy.mlEnglish
    14·
    6 months ago

    You can do that with an alternative launcher. They didn’t require root and there are some that are made to be very similar to the pixel launcher just with more settings.

    I use lawn chair and have the search bar hidden normally, but it appears for local app only search when I swipe up.

    • misery mansion@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      6 months ago

      I’m using action launcher and I really like the search. It searches apps but then has quick links too, so you can send the search query to a search engine, Google play or others

  • fodderoh@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    6 months ago

    On my pixel, if I type something in to the search bar so it displays search results (any results) and then scroll all the way to the bottom, there is a settings button I can click on that takes me to settings for the search. If I turn all the options off, then I get just my local apps in the results.

  • nomad@infosec.pubEnglish
    82·
    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.mlOPEnglish
      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.

  • bitwolf@lemmy.oneEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    You can add a search bar to the app drawer from the launcher settings that searches the app drawer.

    As for system wide search. I ended up using sesame

    • Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      It sounds like it but, in general I prefer to have 1 maybe 2 home screen pages of stuff I know I’ll use all the time right away and anything else I’d rather just search.

      I suppose if you have only enough apps to fill maybe a single home screen page then by that standard I’d have a lot as between my less frequently used apps and all of Google’s pre-installed ones that’s probably a few pages, but generally I try to be sparing with them.

      • algorithmae@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        I like to use folders in my app drawer to organize them, maybe it’s something you can try? I run an old version of Nova before they got bought out