Fuck Google

Sorry for the potty mouth, but as it is my own blog I feel ok using such strong language to express my frustration with the latest thing broken by design on a software update, and is something I have been saying 10s or 100s of times a day when I use my recently upgraded phone…

Android 15 came out for my Pixel 7a quite a while ago but I did not install it for fear of it breaking the integration with my Pebble Watch and while I always install security updates right when they become available, I do not like major upgrades because tech companies always love to change and move things around just because they think they are smarter than everyone else and know what’s best.

Well this time it did not break my Pebble integration, but because Google knows best they expropriated the long Home press to launch “Circle Search”. That is fine I understand the bread and butter of Google is knowing everything about us to make their search business more lucrative, but what is not fine is not allowing a customization of what a long Home press does like was previously possible.

I had a long Home press mapped to an app called FAST that is a quick app launcher. This allows me to quickly launch any app and is really a convenient time saver.

But now every time I do a long home press out of years of training it does nothing and I remember and say “Fuck Google”.

For now the two workarounds I am testing:

  • Power Button: Settings -> System -> Gestures -> Press & hold power button
    • problem here is that every night when i go to turn off my phone it launches Fast and does not ask me to turn off the phone and I say “Fuck Google” and have to open the phone, pull down the screen, hit the power button, and then say turn off.
  • Quick Tap: Settings -> System -> Gestures -> Quick Tap to start actions
    • just found this this morning and testing with it. Probably will stick with this

And a quick search verifies I am not the only one upset with this change:

Thanks for reading and feel free to give feedback or comments via email (andrew@jupiterstation.net).