One of the things I liked about pre-Ice Cream Sandwich smartphones was the persistent search button. From any app you could press a button and search within the app — or across your entire device. That’s no longer there now that we’ve got the 3-soft-buttons.

The Google Search Widget made it easy to put a search bar on any of your home screens, but that search button made it somewhat redundant. Now, with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, gone is the search button, and so is the Search Widget. Instead, we have a persistent Search Bar across every home screen — whether you want it or not.

Isn’t there some way to get rid of it? Lucky for you, there is — but it’ll cost ya!

XDA member oscillik has found a simple trick that will banish the search bar from your home screens. Open Settings, Apps, All, Google Search and tap “Disable”. There you go! No more search bar!

Unfortunately, the space the Search Bar took up up can’t be used to hold an extra row of icons or widgets, and your Google Search app won’t work while it’s “disabled”.

Now, if we could hack a “Search” button into the soft-button bar…

Source: XDA