On the website there has appeared a new update for FP4 - only security patches. https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/4405858220945-Fairphone-4-OS-Release-Notes
Release date: 30th September 2024
Android version: 13
Software Version: FP4.TP2L.C.0126
Security Patch Level: 5th September 2024
Edit. @yvmuell thanks for clearing my post, I wrote it in a bit of a hurry
I think the animation scale bug (going from 0,5 or 1x to 2x by it’s own) is also resolved here…
Wow, you are quick spotters 
The update will be downloadable for most users in 4 minutes!
Update went smooth and flawlessly. Thanks!
Like always re-rooting was somewhat awkward. The boot process was very slow after the update although I am not sure, if that is caused by my setup or a general issue.
No I am on the Sep 5th Security Level, and that is good
Sometimes, it is Play Services update that can prolong the black boot screen quite a lot.
Usual link to the ota.zip in case someone needs it 
At last!
So they managed to release the security patches in September, literally at the eleventh hour? 
Installed without issues.
Same here (203 MB, that definitely wasn’t just cosmetic!), but funny enough, after the reboot I got a prompt to re-select the default search engine. Which had already been selected since 2022… 
Oh well…
I got that prompt as well. But as far as I can remember it was the first time I was ever asked about it…
After the last update (September 2024) I was shown a notification that it is now possible to change the search engine of the search bar. So, I changed (Google to Qwant). During the process a note indicated that the search engine app will be installed if not present and that the search engine could be changed at any time from the home screen.
After a while I wanted to try another search engine but could not find the option to do so. So, I removed the Qwant app and hoped the system would ask for a new search engine. Instead the search bar showed that it is initialising and nothing further happened. After a reboot it was gone completely, no search bar!
Now I’m able to place any browser widget at any position I want instead of the search bar.
That might be a bug but I like the outcome because the position of my search bar is not pinned anymore and it is quite easy to exchange the search engine.
Strange, because this search engine choice has been an EU requirement for many years: Normally it should pop up the first time you start any new Android phone.
Unless you first started your phone with an non-EU provider, I think you probably just don’t remember it.
As I said above, this has been an EU requirement for years. I think the way this is handled has somehow changed in the latest version, so it asked all over again.
There actually isn’t one IIRC. I remember reading from people searching it a couple times in this forum.
But if you found a way to get rid of that (for me utterly useless) search bar, that’s great news! 
Well I’ve never previously had the issue, and now my animator duration scale has been reset from 0.5 to 1.0. Hopefully it’s just a once-off forced reset as part of this update.
same thing here… i re-set them to 0,5x and i’ll see in a few days !
Thanks
For me it was also the first time I was asked, or maybe I’ve forgotten.
I did somehow manage to have the search bar be replaced with a date-only label. Still can’t remove it, but at least it’s a bit less annoying now.
When asked to select a search engine, I selected duckduckgo, which unexpectedly also installed the ddg browser. I didn’t want that, so I removed it. The Google bar stopped working, and said Initializing for at least an hour. I didn’t wait for it to finish and rebooted. After that, the Google bar was replaced with the date.
I also searched for a search engine setting which should apparently be in the Google app, under your profile picture, but it’s not there.
It’s because the search bar needs a web browser to fetch and show the results. Think of that bar as a simple “web search widget”.
For Google Search the browser is Chrome (the Android browser), for DDG Search it’s a branded version of Firefox, and without it the search function can’t obviously work, because you’ve removed all steps after “entering the question”…
They didn’t anticipate this because you can’t really uninstall Chrome, the Android browser. It just happens DDG uses a different browser (it wouldn’t make much sense to call yourself a privacy-focused search engine and use Chrome, would it…), one you can uninstall.
So indeed, it’s confirmed, choosing DDG as default search and then uninstalling the DDG browser gets rid of the search bar! 
That’s great news! I’ve waited for years for a way to get rid of that sorry waste of pixels.
worked the same before this if you uninstalled google app + google chrome.
