Google is making a big change to the home screen search bar on its Pixel devices, as it now offers a search experience powered by the Google app.
It's being done to promote Google AI mode
The Pixel Launcher on your Google Pixel smartphones contains two search bars – one at the bottom of the home screen and another accessible by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. Previously, both search bars offered the same experience, allowing you to search the web as well as your device settings, contacts, apps, and more. That's now changing, as the home screen search bar now offers a search experience powered by the Google app.
Initially, it was speculated that there was a bug causing changes to the Pixel search. However, the search giant has now confirmed that this change is intentional and part of the November 2025 Feature Drop.
Following this change, tapping the home screen search bar widget opens a full-screen window that looks very similar to what you see when you open the Google app and tap the search bar there. There's still a row of five suggested apps, but below it, you'll now find a few more recent online searches than what used to appear in the previous search bar, which wasn't powered by the Google app. You can still search for installed apps, but the Google-powered search bar doesn't let you search for contacts or browse through device settings.
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Google's November 2025 Pixel Drop announcement post states that this change is being made to make the AI mode easily accessible directly from your Pixel smartphone's home screen. It will also make sure that you can quickly start and continue your searches using the AI mode.
What are you going to do about this change on your Pixel smartphones?
I actually love the AI mode, so I love this change.
0%
Maybe I’ll install a different Android launcher.
100%
It's a downgrade, Google
Previous search experience on the left and new search experience on the right. | Image by PhoneArena
It's been a while since the search giant introduced the AI Mode feature. Although it can be accessed by opening Google Chrome on your smartphone and tapping the AI Mode button on the homepage, the company now wants to make access easier by integrating the Google app into the home screen search bar of Pixel smartphones. But who actually asked for this? I personally don't like this change at all.
It makes the search bar less useful. In my testing, I also found that the new search experience isn't as fast as the previous one. Furthermore, it takes away the uniqueness of the search bar, as the new experience is similar to what you get on non-Pixel Android smartphones.
It's been a few months since I purchased the Pixel 10, and I've now developed the habit of tapping the search bar at the bottom of the home screen whenever I need to search through the device settings. Unfortunately, I can't do that anymore. There's also no way to remove the search bar from the home screen, so I'm pretty sure I'll accidentally keep tapping it for a while because of muscle memory.
There's always the option to switch to a different launcher, but I think that would be an extreme step for now. Hopefully, Google rolls back this change or provides an option to switch to the previous search, because the new one doesn’t look good from either a visual or functional perspective.
Aman Kumar is a tech news writer with a long-standing passion for smartphones. Aman specializes in everything smartphones, from AI features like Pixel’s Camera Coach to understanding ideal hardware combinations. He loves breaking down complex features in a simple, clear way and hopes manufacturers bring back bold designs like the Nokia N-Gage. When he’s not writing, he’s either gaming on PUBG or talking fitness as a dedicated gym enthusiast.
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