I mean, good on you to go for Graphene, but honestly a lot of stuff you describe is solved with a custom launcher. Search bar and customizability for example. I use KISS launcher on my private phone (Pixel 7) and on my work phone (Pixel 9), no issues with either of these topics.
The one thing I wholeheartedly agree with though is the cancer that is Google Photos and the peddling of backing up stuff.
GrapheneOS comes enirely Google free out of the box, including telemetry. It is also a reasonably secure mobile OS. You don’t get all that by just changing the launcher.
I mean, good on you to go for Graphene, but honestly a lot of stuff you describe is solved with a custom launcher. Search bar and customizability for example. I use KISS launcher on my private phone (Pixel 7) and on my work phone (Pixel 9), no issues with either of these topics.
The one thing I wholeheartedly agree with though is the cancer that is Google Photos and the peddling of backing up stuff.
GrapheneOS comes enirely Google free out of the box, including telemetry. It is also a reasonably secure mobile OS. You don’t get all that by just changing the launcher.