How to remove the Home Screen Search Button on iOS 16

The first thing you notice on your iPhone’s Home Screen running iOS 16 that wasn’t there on iOS 15 is the new Spotlight Search Button. There are definitely users that welcome this novelty but there are also iPhone users who will openly dislike it. Luckily, this feature is optional and you can remove the Home Screen Search Button in a few simple steps. Learn how to do it below.

Disclaimer: We based the information provided in this article on the iOS 16 Public Beta. The instructions perfectly apply to the Stable version.

How do I turn off the Spotlight Search button on Home Screen?

With iOS 16, Apple introduced a dedicated Spotlight button where you can search for and access a whole plethora of results and app features. We reckon that the idea behind this button is to make the Spotlight Search a bit more accessible. On iOS 15, a swipe down from any empty space on Home Screen would bring the Spotlight Search pop-up. However, with the yesteryear big widget revamp, Home Screen can get a bit jammed these days with all those widgets, folders, and app shortcuts. So there’s already a lot less space to operate.

On iOS 16, you can trigger Spotlight Search with the swipe-down gesture, too, but now Apple added a dedicated Home Screen search button. If you dislike it and don’t find it aesthetically pleasing as I did, you can disable it in Home Screen settings in no more than 3 steps.

Here’s how to remove the Home Screen Spotlight Search Button on your iPhone:

1. Open Settings.
2. Select Home Screen.
3. Disable Show on Home Screen under Search.

As simple as that. Again, this will only remove the Spotlight Button but the functionality will stay and you can trigger it with a swipe-down gesture.

And, on that note, we can conclude this article and thank you for reading. Do you prefer the Spotlight button on your Home Screen or rather use the swipe gesture to bring up the Search? Do you even use Spotlight Search? Tell us in the comments section below.

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