After updating my device to the new One UI 8.5 (Android 16), I started experiencing an issue with the Brave Search widget on my home screen. When I tap the widget, the browser opens, but the default search engine (Google) doesn’t launch. The URL bar remains completely empty, the search engine icon is missing, and it doesn’t search for any text. I have to force close and reopen the app for it to work.
How can this issue be reproduced?
1. Add the Brave Search widget to the home screen.
2. Tap the widget to initiate a search.
3. The browser opens, but the search intent fails (the URL/search bar is blank and unresponsive).
Expected result:
Tapping the search widget should immediately open the browser with the search bar active and the default search engine ready to process queries.
I’ve already tried removing and re-adding the widget, and clearing the app cache, but the issue persists. It seems the widget intent is not passing correctly to the browser after the new OS update.
Thank you for the suggestion. I completely uninstalled and reinstalled the Brave app, but unfortunately, the exact same issue still persists.
I am attaching an image below to better illustrate what happens. As you can see, when I tap the search widget, the browser opens but the URL/search bar remains completely empty and the search engine intent is not triggered at all.
Are there any other specific settings or flags I should check?
Do you have the latest version of Brave on your phone?
Can you try restarting your phone and see if it’s the same issue that these users are having, but much worse? I suspect that an update still has the widget “cached”, but could be totally speculating.
It appears that others have asked for Brave to bring back the search widget that they removed in that update.
Your issue could be linked - Brave may no longer support the widget (which is very annoying and inconvenient I could imagine).
I’d ask @Mattches and see if Brave officially removed the widget, or if it’s buggy right now.
Thanks for the detailed response and for sharing those GitHub links!
To answer your questions: Yes, I am on the latest version available on the Play Store right now (Brave 1.90.122). I have also restarted my phone multiple times, along with clearing the cache and re-adding the widget, but the issue remains.
Regarding the GitHub threads, my situation seems slightly different. The search widget is still available in my widget menu, and I can successfully place it on my home screen. The bug is that it just doesn’t work correctly when tapped—it opens the browser to a blank URL bar instead of triggering the search input intent. It feels like a compatibility bug specifically triggered by the One UI 8.5 (Android 16) update.
@Mattches , could you please take a look at this? Is this a known intent/compatibility bug with newer Android 16 updates, or is this widget actually deprecated but somehow left broken in the UI?
Yes, I am able to type in the address bar once the blank page opens. However, it doesn’t actually perform the search.
When I type something into the bar and press enter/search on my keyboard, absolutely nothing happens. The page remains blank and doesn’t load any search results. To actually make a search, I have to force close the browser and open it normally from the app icon.
I just watched the video you uploaded, and yes, that is exactly the issue I am experiencing! The video perfectly demonstrates the bug.
I will download and test the Brave Nightly build right now to see if this behavior is fixed in the upstream version, and I’ll report back here with the results shortly.
Thanks for taking the time to reproduce and record this!
