Remove widgets from homescreen

I want to reorganize my homescreen and remove the big search widget at the top. Holding it should give a remove option, but that doesn’t work. I’ve been able to remove it by uninstalling the search app (duckduckgo), but now it gives the date in that location. I still can’t drag an icon or widget there.

Is there a way to fix this? Is this hardcoded? I find it very wasteful to have such a big widget take up valuable screen real estate in such a prime location, and there’s no good reason why search couldn’t just be a simple 1x1 icon. Surely this can be customized the way I want it? Having so much space reserved for something I don’t want is not reasonable.

Would it work to move everything to the next screen and delete the first home screen? Is that possible? Or make the second screen the home screen?

Removing the search bar is possible by using a different launcher.

Why deleting the first screen? Move everything you want to see all the time to the second screen and stay on that.

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Or by deactivating the Google App.

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I’ll try to figure out how to do that. What are the best launchers?

But won’t home send me back to the empty first screen?

You mean the search app? I was already using DuckDuckGo, and removing it removed the search bar, but didn’t free up the space.

I never used a different one, but Nova Launcher is mentioned here quite often.

Maybe, but a quick swipe would bring you to the next one. And the famous back function should always bring you to the second screen, where you started.

I mean the App called Google

Can you confirm what you see on your homescreen, first or second example?

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I see only the second. Just the date.

Ok if this still bothers you, the only way is another launcher.

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That depends a lot on your preferences.

here you can read more about launchers:

i do use the Olaunger, only i dont expect you to like that one:

more likely this is what you are looking for:

there is a Fairphone Seport page about the Quickstep launcher: