Searching the Play Store will soon become a less frustrating experience

There are many apps that offer search features but have been designed in such a way so that when you scroll, the search bar disappears to make more room for the content you’re viewing. This is something Google has done with the Play Store, which can sometimes be frustrating if you need to search again.

The good news is that according to a post on X by @AssembleDebug, it looks like Google is testing a change that makes the search bar on the homescreen sticky. As you can see in the demo video below, basically this change will make the search bar stick to the top of the screen even as you scroll down.

Play Store testing sticky search bar on homescreen

Current behaviour hides the search bar when you scroll up.#Google #Android pic.twitter.com/QUfBxaAvGZ

— AssembleDebug (@AssembleDebug) October 14, 2023

Prior to this, when you would search the Play Store and scroll through the results, the search bar would disappear. Users would have to scroll back up a bit more to pull the search bar back, although from personal experience sometimes this doesn’t work so well depending on how far back you scroll, which can be a bit annoying and frustrating at times.

This is a minor change and given the size of our phone displays, they’re large enough where having a sticky search bar won’t eat too much into the rest of the content anyway. There’s no word on if or when Google plans to roll this change out, but what do you think? Is this a change for the better?