After installing the stable version of Android 13 today, beta users may notice that the new unified search experience in the Pixel Launcher is gone.
One of the best features of Android 13 on Pixel phones is that it unifies web and device search. The search bar at the bottom of your home screen is now the same as the box that appears at the top of the app grid.
After updating to Android 13 stable from Beta 4.1, all our devices lost unified search. This includes phones where we’ve manually side-loaded the update and those that have received the device’s minor OTA from Beta 4.1 to stable. We are seeing this issue on several Pixel 4a, 6, 6 Pro, and 6a devices.
One telltale sign of this regression is how the search boxes are no longer identical, with the app drawer bar losing the ‘G’ logo, the microphone and the Google Lens icon. The actual home screen experience goes back to the previous years without Material You styles.
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Google told us tonight that it is aware of the issue and that it will be fixed in an “upcoming release.” Hopefully this can be fixed through a server-side patch, as the issue seems to have subsided without any end-user action or app update.
Android 13 Beta users had unified search during the preview and shortly after updating to the stable version. The new user interface automatically disappears after some time or after restarting the device.
Meanwhile, Google has a fix for how Android 13 Beta users can’t sideload the OTA due to the image being older than the Beta 4.1 patch. The device update (Check for OTA) is rolling out widely this afternoon.
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