Last Updated on April 9, 2017 by Mathew Diekhake
The stock Android design is simple yet elegant for Android KitKat and 5.0 Lollipop. Often people like to simplify it more by removing the search bar that’s on the top of the home screen. Furthermore, since Google Now is a stock feature on the Sony Xperia Z3, countless others prefer searching with the voice feature. We know Google and Android is great open source software for many reasons. One of the reasons is because they let us tweak the OS with lots of customization options even without root access. Since Android KitKat we have the camera app, full screen album art and movie art all available from the lock screen. If you don’t want it there they also allow us to change the widgets and remove them. However, when it comes to the default search bar many people believe the folks out of Mountain View still have work to do.
You see, the search bar is easily removed and we’ll show you how in a minute. First you should know that after you remove it you can’t replace the space with any of the other widgets. It will have a blank space that nothing sits. You can understand that it’s for a certain shape and that’s probably the reason. It takes extra work to allow the top of that space integrate into another widget area and the developers haven’t done that.
If you want to remove the bar so that it’s no longer visible you must long-press your finger on the search bar widget. Once done, a note will pop up on the screen saying “search bar visibility.” Tick the box and confirm.
Those of you who would like to see it restored back on the top of the display must navigate to Settings > Apps > All > Xperia Home > Clear Data. You have now restored the search bar. Note that the home screen is returning to the default home screen so any customizing you did must be applied.