Newsletter
The Google Play Store app could get a fixed search bar, it seems. Google is testing this feature as we speak, as was spotted by AssembleDebug. For those of you who don’t know, he’s in charge of the Google Apps Flags & Leaks Telegram community.
Google could roll out a fixed search bar to the Play Store app
The change here is very simple and straightforward. When you open the Google Play Store app on your phone now, you’ll see a search bar at the top. Next to it is the notification bell, and your profile picture aka options for your profile.
None of that will change. However, when you try to scroll down now, the search bar goes away in its entirety. It does pop back up whenever you scroll up, immediately, you don’t need to scroll up all the way.
That’s the only part of the UI that disappears when you scroll. The app categories below (For you, Top charts, Kids, and so on) stay there Well, Google is seemingly testing a slight change in the code.
The company wants the search bar to stay fixed as well, along with the categories below it. That way the search bar will always be only one tap away, and you won’t need to scroll beforehand.
You can activate it now, but the process is not simple
You can even enable it as we speak, but you need to be rooted, and the process is not all that straightforward. Not only is a flag change needed, but you’ll also need GappsMod in order to make it happen. If you’d like to know more, here’s all the info.
Now, just because Google is experimenting with this doesn’t mean it’ll become a reality. Google conducts various similar tests on the UI side of things, and not all of them end up being used.
This is a rather small change, and not many users would care if Google made it. Using a fixed search bar could make things a bit simpler for non-tech-savvy people, though.