For as long as Pixel phones have existed, two elements have been bolted to the home screen with no option to remove them: the At a Glance widget at the top and the Google search bar at the bottom. Users who wanted a clean home screen, or who simply preferred a different search engine, had two choices: accept Google's layout or install a third-party launcher.
Google removed the first constraint with Android 16 earlier this year, finally allowing users to hide At a Glance. Now a leaked build of Android 17 QPR1, the quarterly platform release expected in September, shows the search bar is next.
A screen recording shared by the leaker Mystic Leaks and reported by 9to5Google shows a new toggle in Pixel Launcher settings under "Search bar settings" that allows users to turn the bar off entirely. Android Authority independently found corresponding code strings in the Android 17 QPR1 beta 2 build, including references to "Show search bar" and "Customize search bar," confirming that the feature is in active development.
The change is not yet confirmed by Google and remains subject to revision before the stable release, but the convergence of leaked video and code teardown evidence suggests it is likely to ship.
That it has taken this long is the more interesting story.
Every major Android manufacturer other than Google, including Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi and Nothing, has offered home screen search bar customisation for years. Samsung's One UI lets users remove, resize and reposition the search widget. Xiaomi's HyperOS treats it as a standard widget that can be deleted with a long press. The Pixel Launcher's refusal to offer the same flexibility has been a persistent source of frustration among Android enthusiasts, many of whom chose Pixel phones specifically for the stock Android experience and then found it less customisable than the manufacturer skins they were trying to avoid.
Google's reluctance was almost certainly commercial rather than aesthetic. The home screen search bar is a direct pipeline to Google Search, the company's single largest source of revenue. Every query typed into that bar generates advertising income. Removing it from the default home screen, even optionally, introduces a friction point between the user and Google's core business.
The same logic applied to At a Glance, which surfaces Google Calendar events, weather data, travel information and other contextual cards that keep users within Google's ecosystem. Making both elements mandatory ensured that every Pixel owner, regardless of their preferences, was funnelled through Google's services dozens of times a day.
The decision to finally relent likely reflects a calculation that the reputational cost of the restriction had begun to outweigh the revenue benefit. Pixel phones compete in a premium market where customisation and user control are selling points, and a home screen that feels less flexible than a Samsung Galaxy is a difficult thing to defend in product reviews.
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The change also frees up screen space. With the search bar removed, the bottom row of the home screen becomes available for apps, folders or widgets, giving users a layout option that has been standard on virtually every other Android device for years.
For most Pixel owners, the toggle will be a quiet quality-of-life improvement. For the subset who have been requesting it since the original Pixel launched in 2016, it is the resolution of a complaint that is almost a decade old. The only question is why it took Google ten years to offer a choice that every competitor figured out on day one.
The recap
- Pixel phones may gain a toggle to hide the search bar
- Change appears in Android 17 QPR1 beta build leak
- Stable release is expected to arrive in June 2026