[AC Question]

Hi - about a week ago a Google search icon [ a blue magnifying glass] appeared in the notification area of my status bar on my phone.
It's never been there before and is particularly useless as it leads to a search box which doesn't include the microphone,[voice search] option, like the one on my home screen.
The most important thing is that I have limited space in the notification area, and with too many items, am not able to see when I got a voicemail etc. How can I get rid of it?, or will I just have to delete Google search from my phone?.

The phone is a Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray ST18 Android 2.3.4.

[mrsmumbles]

That doesn't sound like the real Google search to me. Can you post a screenshot?

[Kelly Kearns]

Hi - about a week ago a Google search icon [ a blue magnifying glass] appeared in the notification area of my status bar on my phone.
It's never been there before and is particularly useless as it leads to a search box which doesn't include the microphone,[voice search] option, like the one on my home screen.
The most important thing is that I have limited space in the notification area, and with too many items, am not able to see when I got a voicemail etc. How can I get rid of it?, or will I just have to delete Google search from my phone?.

The phone is a Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray ST18 Android 2.3.4.

Welcome to the forums!

I'm not aware of a Google magnifying glass on the phone. It would help for you to register and post a screenshot of the icon.

[Javier P]

You could try this. Expand the notification bar and long press on that one. Tap on app info. Tell us what it says.

[Andy Warner1]

xperia.jpgxperia2.jpgxperia3.jpg thanks to everyone for all the quick replies!. Hopefully above are some screenshots. the first one just has the magnifying glass icon, when expanded it shows a search box beginning with the Google G on the left, and if that is clicked on a search page opens with different tabs for web, app, and video

You could try this. Expand the notification bar and long press on that one. Tap on app info. Tell us what it says.

thanks, but a long press doesn't seem to do anything different to a short one.

[gone down south]

Anything on the left side of the notification bar is app based - something you installed is doing that.... Time to work backwards through your apps uninstallinf things...

[Kelly Kearns]

Anything on the left side of the notification bar is app based - something you installed is doing that.... Time to work backwards through your apps uninstallinf things...

Not always for Samsung, for example, our GPS is on the left.

[Kelly Kearns]

I have searched and can't find anything about this. Let me see if some other might.

[Kelly Kearns]

Ok, I totally missed this was Gingerbread.

Found this info. Look at the Google search and see if there is an option in the settings to turn off the icon.

Voice actions: Tell your phone what to do by pressing the microphone icon next to the search box on the home screen, or long press the magnifying glass. You can tell it to send an email or text message (" send text to mom, see you for pizza at 7" ), call someone ( "call mom" ), navigate somewhere ( "navigate to pizza" ), or listen to music ( "listen to Mamma Mia" ).

[Andy Warner1]

the Google search box on the home screen includes the microphone button and works well. When you enter a search it asks you which browser you want to proceed in. However the unwanted search box, goes through to UC browser directly. I wonder if this is a feature that arrived with an update for UC browser?

[Andy Warner1]

Uninstalled UC browser, and the thing went, so try a different browser i guess....shame because I liked UC's pinch zoom and word wrap combination The others don't seem to have that

[Andy Warner1]

after having a moan on the UC browser Forum, and asking if it were possible to use an old version of it, I got the reply below. Turns out this innovation is called a "notification shortcut", and can be turned off via the 'quick access' menu. I wish they'd told everyone when they did the update that included this, but I suppose they get money from Google for adding it..

Thanks for everyone's help in pointing me in the right direction

Hi, my dear friend~

Sorry for the late reply. Cebe is here to help.
Do you mean that you don't want to have search icon in notification part of status bar? If yes, you may be able to turn it off. You could access it in menu>settings>quick access>quick search, turn this option off and you could get rid of it from your status bar. Hope this could be helpful to you.

Wish you all the best and good day~