• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Malware search bar at bottom of screen?

S

Shahz_Android

Lurker
Hi. I have a Google Pixel 3 which I bought fairly recently. I have started to notice that a search bar named "search for Chevy truck" pops up at the bottom of my screen intermittently. Sometimes, it happens while I'm typing on my keyboard and end up accidentally pressing it, as it usually pops up over my spacebar button. I'm quite sure this is some kind of a malware that was wondering if you guys can help me find a way to remove this.
 
Quite unusual. Have you installed anything lately before you saw this. Can you also provide a screenshot of this thing you're mentioning. One thing I can recommend is to run the device on safe mode and check if it would still appear. To do this you can just do the following steps.

  • Press the power button until you get the options (power off, restart, screen shot)
  • Tap and hold down the restart option until a pop-up message appears
  • Confirm going to Safe Mode.
If the search bar on Safe Mode then it just means that there's a third party application causing this and you might need to remove some 3rd party apps you have installed or transferred from an old phone.
 
You might also want to review any applications with the "display over other apps" permission. Do this at Settings > Apps & notifications > Advanced > Special app access > Display over other apps. Since this search bar is appearing on top of whatever else you're doing it's quite likely that a spammy app is abusing this particular permission.
 
Here is a screenshot. The bar popped up as I was editing a picture.
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot_20190828-140920.png
    Screenshot_20190828-140920.png
    1.3 MB · Views: 267
The photo editor is Snapseed which isn't a 3rd party app. Any way to find out which app? The search bar just opens up randomly from time to time. I tried looking inside the "Display over other apps" section but I don't know which one to disable. None of them share a name similarity with the search bar.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom