If the search bar at the bottom of the Pixel Launcher looks ever so slightly different, it’s because Google made things a tiny bit taller.
The pill-shaped search bar is now just a few pixels taller. This change also applies to the Google app’s Search homescreen widget.
A slightly more obvious change is how Google increased the size of the Lens, voice search, and AI Mode (or your set shortcut) icons. This does make things look a bit more proportional.
Old vs. new
Zooming out, Google threw away the Material 3 Expressive redesign of the Pixel Launcher search bar last December. The Google app intentionally replaced unified device search to essentially give AI Mode more prominence once you started searching.
Besides unified search now only being available when you open the app drawer, Google reverting to the previous Search bar design did not look very modern. Today’s height adjustment does a tiny bit to help fix that, but unified device search is sorely missed.
The search bar tweaks rolled out with version 17.32 of the Google app, which is now widely available in the stable channel. This is not an Android 17 change, with the above screenshots from Android 16.
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