Option to Remove Search Bar

[ghost]

I hope to be able to remove the search bar as it gets in the way of navigation buttons (pixel 3a with navigation buttons hidden in launcher settings). Also, the keyboard gets in the way of the homescreen image, and the gesture to trigger the keyboard is to easily activated. (turning off gesture will turn off swipe up for notifactions as well. #1250 would also fix this last issue if merged, but this issue realy is not so important in my opinion.) For these reasons, I am requesting the option to remove the search bar, or have the ability for it to be moved to the top of the homescreen (or possibly a transparent keyboard, but this seems unrealistic). Thank you as well for what is in my opinion the best Android launcher.

[TBog]

Have you tried the full screen option? (Hide navbar and Hide status bar)

[ghost]

I have both settings enabled, I want to disable the search bar in the homescreen so that I don't click it when trying to use the navigation bar. This might only be on pixel 3a.

[Neamar]

Can you send a screenshot? I'm not sure I understand the new Pixel3a navigation.

[ghost]

[ghost]

When the option to hide the navigation buttons is set to on, the search bar moves to the bottom of the screen, where the navigation bar was.

[ghost]

I do have the same set up, but don't get your problem: So to be able to help you, probably you can clarify what do you want to do when the search bar or the keyboard gets in your way.

(For example if I want to go the recent app view I just swipe up two times, one for showing the keyboard and the navbar the second time for going to the recent app view)

[ghost]

What I want is an option to only have the app drawer and settings button on the homescreen with no search bar.

[ghost]

To clarify, there is not realy a problem with the function of the search bar (it does not realy get in the way so much that it is a problem). It is mainly that it is aesthetically pleasing to me if I know that the search bar is not there. Considering this, I realize that it is a very unusual request but i still belive others would enjoy this option as well. Thank you for your reply.

[ghost]

do you know that you can make the search bar transparent? would this help as well?

[ghost]

Yes I have enabled that option just not in the screenshot.

[Neamar]

Alright, can you send a screenshot with the transparent bar, and another one with what you'd like to have? I'm not sure I understand right now

[ghost]

[ghost]

The above is with the transparent bar.

[ghost]

This is what happens if you click on the area where the search bar is.

[ghost]

What I want is for there to be no seach bar at all on the homescreen (so that the keyboard will never show up on the homescreen as in the second screenshot).

[Neamar]

Sorry, I still don't understand.

You don't ever want to see the keyboard? This doesn't make sense to me, what you're looking for is just a wallpaper without any interaction?

[ghost]

Yes I will use the app drawer only.

[Neamar]

Ok, I see.

I'm sorry but that's not a use-case that I feel comfortable supporting.

KISS is about search, removing search wouldn't make sense for me.

However, feel free to fork the app, the changes are not super complex -- I'm just not willing to have them in general, as I find the option confusing.

[ghost]

@Neamar I now have some experience in coding (JavaScript, and even then I'm only a beginner) and I want to turn off the search bar in favor of the homescreen and as you suggested I will fork this application. I am not good with multi file applications yet and I'm not sure where I could find the event listener for the search bar on the home screen that makes the keyboard popup when touched. if it is possible could you tell me where the file for the home screen search bar is located? thanks.

[Neamar]

Hi! What you'll want to start with is removing this:

https://github.com/Neamar/KISS/blob/79fa89e4e2b771e5c401c2d1d8b6c4dfc9379031/app/src/main/res/layout/main.xml#L125-L144

This'll trigger a lot of errors in the code: all the places referencing the search bar. You can then go through them one by one and remove / update them.

A much simpler option is to add android:visibility="invisible" on line 143, which won't remove the search bar completely but hide it -- and you're done. You can also use android:visibility="gone" but this'll probably mess up with the layout.

Good luck

[AnthillSudoku]

@yakagami if you have not find a solution yet have a look at

Discreet Launcher (Enjoy a clean home screen while accessing everything in an instant) - https://f-droid.org/packages/com.vincent_falzon.discreetlauncher

[ghost]

@lucamp I tried it out. Its actually pretty good except one thing; there is an option to remove the name of applications and just have icons but no way to just have the names and no icons. One of the most unique things about KISS launcher is that the developer has created this feature, which is the only feature I use . I do like that the app you mentioned does allow for a clean home screen though. If you know of any launcher that satisfies both criteria (and is open source) I'd definitely check it out though.

[sdothum]

i would like to chime in and voice my favour for this request also.

i love the power of the KISS search but would prefer to be able to enable it (with raised keyboard) using a swipe action (up in my use case). This would allow the entirety of the home page to be available as a touch zone to live wallpapers -- including the bottom most portions of the screen.

[syphyr]

Is there a way to just make the blinking cursor in the search bar only be visible when selecting the search bar?

Perhaps something like: android:cursorVisible="true" android:focusable="true" android:focusableInTouchMode="true"

[syphyr]

This seems to be best solution for blinking cursor: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5582702/disable-edittext-blinking-cursor

[ghost]

@Neamar

Ok, I see.

I'm sorry but that's not a use-case that I feel comfortable supporting.

KISS is about search, removing search wouldn't make sense for me.

However, feel free to fork the app, the changes are not super complex -- I'm just not willing to have them in general, as I find the option confusing.

The launcher itself is very close perfect but this answer is downright horrible and I'm deeply astonished (in a bad way) by it.

My use-case is that I need to hide some apps from my home screen. This is critical in the situation I am in, in the sense that my life is very highly endangered if someone would find the apps I want to hide and their contents. I have Android 7.0, this version isn't supported by Amarok-Hider app, and my OS doesn't have a native hiding functionality, and there are no other open-source hider apps. All other hiders on Play Store are either bad or add/trackers-ridden with lots of unnecessary permissions. So I tried many launchers via which I can hide apps and found out KISS to be the best of them. I configured the launcher so that the apps I want to hide wouldn't appear anywhere except when I intentionally search for them by tapping on the search bar and typing the name of the app. However, there's no option to hide the blinking cursor. You can make the search bar transparent, you can hide 'circle' and 'three dots' and so on, and everything will disappear EXCEPT the blinking cursor, which you cannot remove. If someone would get ahold of my phone, that blinking cursor will hint them to press on it, because they'll realize this is a text field. Then they can just press letter by letter and see the results, and if they go through all the letters, eventually the results will display a hidden app. The mitigation would be to just remove the blinking cursor (which subsequently won't give any hints to the adversary - they won't realize that the search bar even exists, unless they accidentally tap there and a cursor shows, along with a keyboard), just as in the screenshot of the deleted user which only shows a colored wallpaper with blank home screen and that's all. This is exactly what I want. I'm not a programmer at all, so telling me to fork your project and fk off is not a solution. But I'm quite sure that, in this case where the developer refuses to add an option to disable the whole search bar, removing the blinking cursor instead isn't too difficult (and I'm almost sure the developer won't add a feature of removing the cursor either). Too bad the developer simply refused to do it just because of some ideological reasons and their exclusive preference:

KISS is about search

KISS - keep it simple, stupid. Well, not simple/stupid enough to remove the search bar or the blinking cursor. No one said or implied whether KISS is about some thing or not. The user likes your launcher but wants to remove the search bar - as simple as that, nothing more. Don't hold so dearly to your ideology, stating what KISS is about and what it is not about. Your launcher is not exclusively about search and only about search. It's up to the end user to decide what it is about and in what way they prefer to interact with the app; it's up to them to decide whether they want to use the search bar or not. In the context of this launcher, the search bar is completely optional: we could disable it and be good to go - we could just use the app drawer by tapping on the circle. Searching functionality is not mandatory/critical to using the app. If a user doesn't like the launcher overall - they uninstall it and move on to the next. In this case, however, the user simply wants to remove the search bar and continue using your launcher, and I want to remove the blinking cursor OR the search bar: both options would solve my problem. If I removed the search bar, I would simply use the app drawer, just as that deleted user said, and I'm satisfied with that. I really can't see what is the problem of removing the search bar would be. If users would like to interact with this launcher without the search bar - let them do it.

removing search wouldn't make sense for me

No one cares/is interested/asked what makes sense for you. The user created a feature request and denying to implement a valid, desirable by other users, possibly easy to implement feature is self-centered and ignores other users' unique UX, ignores the way they prefer to interact with the launcher. In that case and with that attitude just create a launcher that would only make sense for you and don't publish it anywhere (that way you won't expect anyone to make suggestions/feature requests), just keep the app to yourself, and don't reply to users' requests with "Won't do! Doesn't sit well with me".

as I find the option confusing

This is, again, egocentrism and ignoring other users' preferences. Everyone's different, everyone's use-cases/preferences are different. They may like your launcher (it's no-frills, simplistic, extremely fast, has many useful features, etc. Let's get it straight: it's one of the best launchers out there, and fulfills its own niche) but don't need/want to use the search bar. They may want to get all the benefits of your launcher, but they may not need/want to use the search bar itself. Within the scope of this launcher, within the scope of its functionality and features, I find the request to disable the search bar or at least the blinking cursor to be 100% valid, justified and desirable.

[TBog]

As long as you are not a customer you don't get to have feature requests implemented at your whim.

[Neamar]

This is critical in the situation I am in, in the sense that my life is very highly endangered if someone would find the apps I want to hide and their content

If this is really critical and can endanger your life, I don't think steganography is the right option; you need something that requires a proper password to access those apps. If, more realistically, you'd prefer to keep some apps away from prying eyes, you can "exclude from KISS", and then, whenever you need access to them, you can reenable those from the settings. But I don't t recommend using KISS for something life-threatening.

This is exactly what I want. I'm not a programmer at all, so telling me to fork your project and fk off is not a solutio

I understand that. But learning could be a useful skill, wouldn't take days, and that would go beyond fixing your immediate needs: it would also allow you to be more independent.

No one cares/is interested/asked what makes sense for you.

:disappointed:

[ghost]

As long as you are not a customer you don't get to have feature requests implemented at your whim.

This is not even an argument. Even customers don't get to have feature requests implemented at their whim. Whether a piece of software is proprietary/FOSS/paid/free doesn't affect if users' feature requests will be implemented at their whim. It all depends. In the case of this feature request, I'm not the only one here requesting the feature. There are other users here. And I already stated that implementing this feature is possibly easy to implement and the feature itself is valid.

[ghost]

@Neamar

If this is really critical and can endanger your life, I don't think steganography is the right option; you need something that requires a proper password to access those apps.

I do have a feature of password lock. However, the adversary, in my case, will require me to either tell him the password to unlock the app or require me to unlock the app for him. And I have no right to oppose the adversary in any way. Therefore I need exactly to hide my apps, as much as possible, not lock them and have them visible.

If, more realistically, you'd prefer to keep some apps away from prying eyes, you can "exclude from KISS", and then, whenever you need access to them, you can reenable those from the settings.

Sure, I did that. But I access those app very often, so I need a quick access to them. That's why I excluded those apps only from history, but not from KISS itself. That way I'm still able to search for them.

But I don't t recommend using KISS for something life-threatening.

Unfortunately I have no other options except using third-party launcher. KISS is awesome, but I settled on a launcher named Lawnchair. It looks more native-ish, so it won't give the impression to the adversary my home screen/phone is modified in some way. I don't imply here that Lawnchair is better than KISS. It just fits my use-case more.

I understand that. But learning could be a useful skill, wouldn't take days, and that would go beyond fixing your immediate needs: it would also allow you to be more independent.

Do you really want me to learn a programming language to implement a minor feature in your project? Do you really think this is the right way to do it? It is not at all effective and not rational. Next time a user requests a feature, will you also tell him to learn to code and to fork your project to implement a small change? You are the skilled programmer here, this is your project and you know it inside out (most likely), and the most effective and reasonable way would be for you to implement the feature. I will give a very crude analogy: imagine you are a skilled driver, you are driving a car and I'm sitting in the passenger seat next to you. Imagine that I don't know a thing about cars, don't even know which pedals are for the gas and which are for the brakes. Somewhy you are moving into the oncoming lane. I make a remark to you and say that you cannot drive in the oncoming lane and that this will cause an accident. You answer me that "If you want me to drive properly, then learn to drive and then get behind the wheel and drive the car the way you want". Besides, I'm not a programmer and will never be: I simply don't have innate inclinations to be one. I think it is obvious that not everyone can be a programmer - this is a thing for which you have to have inborn predispositions for. I do other things in my life.

[bt4ibwem8]

I would also like to see this option built into the launcher settings... I am not using search bar very often (maybe once a week) so i would prefer to hide/remove search bar (also circle and three-dots menu) because of cleaner design. And if i would need to use search bar i could just simple swipe up on homescreen and app drawer togerher with search bar would pop up... And if i would need to open three-dots menu i could just long-tap on homescreen.

[Misalf-git]

(also circle and three-dots menu)

KISS settings -> User experience -> Hide KISS circle and three-dots menu Buttons will still work, but they'll be invisible.

[bt4ibwem8]

Buttons will still work, but they'll be invisible.

Exactly, buttons are still there, they are just not visible. I wanna remove them together with search bar so they would not take the space on the bottom of the homescreen

[TBog]

The current solution to your requirements has been discussed before.

I'm not sure if it's appropriate, but you may want to try a fork of this launcher.

[bt4ibwem8]

I cannot fork because i am not a dev. Maybe somebody could make PR so it could be merged then...

[TBog]

I cannot fork because i am not a dev. Maybe somebody could make PR so it could be merged then...

Have you tried searching for devs that already forked KISS?

I, for example, have added 3 screens to my launcher so I can separate search, widgets and wallpaper. Unfortunately I can't always keep all the features of KISS.