Yes. It seems to be that the search widget has Ok Google active and responds by default - seems like recently too because I don't remember seeing that before. I removed the widget and now Ok Google no longer functions. That's what I want because I have suspicions that it was eating into my battery life.Does it actually respond if you say "OK Google"? If not, then the functionality is off, which is the important thing. The "Say OK Google" in the bar used to disappear on its own after a certain amount of time, but I've been using Nova Launcher for a while now (without the Google search bar widget), so I'm not sure if that's still the case.
Yes. It seems to be that the search widget has Ok Google active and responds by default - seems like recently too because I don't remember seeing that before. I removed the widget and now Ok Google no longer functions. That's what I want because I have suspicions that it was eating into my battery life.