Search bar missing on iPhone

I had the same problem, but have solved it. What I had vainly tried doing was *swiping down from the MIDDLE of the TOP, but what they say is to swipe down from the very CENTER of the home screen. It is rather tricky, isn't it? I hope this will help you.

I figured out how to trigger this issue to occur.. Of course after force restarting as Lawrence suggested I cannot reproduce the issue any longer. But it was definitely repeatable enough that I could describe for Apple in a bug report. I created the issue a dozen times or so. Hopefully it'll get to the right team and be resolved.

if/when this happens, put your phone to sleep/lock the screen.

Wake your phone, but do not enter it.

(for Face ID models this is really simple because you just don't swipe up to access your Home Screen)

(for Touch ID models, I'd suggest waking your phone with a finger that won't unlock your device)

Swipe right to access your Today View widgets from the Lock Screen.

If yours is the same as what I came across, the search field will be displayed and the cursor captured in the search field rather displaying the widgets.

Simply tap 'cancel' next to the search field, now the widgets should be shown.

Access your phone like normal now and try searching again by swiping downward on the Home Screen.

For me this fixed it.

Try restarting your phone—>Restart your iPhone - Apple Support

You should put your finger on the middle of the screen and drag down.

Or swipe from left to right from the main Home page to view the Today page, which also has a Search on top.

The fix I used which worked was to shutdown the iphone with Settings - General - Shutdown - slide bar to shutdown.

Chris0107 has the perfect fix. The issue is that when you swipe right from the lock screen (by mistake) and click on search... and then close the screen immediately w/o pressing cancel - the search function remains on and hence it does not activate, i.e., you get the blurry screen on swiping down or siri may stop working as well.

Just press cancel on swiping right from the lock screen and problem fixes. Extremely lame issue that Apple has overlooked.

It was doing the same to me I restarted and now it’s working the drop down search.

Previously If I restarted phone it still wouldn't work but I updated it to the latest release and then restarted it and it worked.

Perhaps people having a problem are not launching Search correctly. With iOS 14 there are 2 ways: Swipe from the left edge of the screen to the right from the first page of the Home screen to reveal the summary screen, or put your finger on the middle of the screen and drag down. And also update to 14.4 if you haven’t yet.

Try powering off your phone and try it work for me 🥰.

Swipe from Left to Right

The issue most folks are having is that selecting the search itself causes the blurring, no keyboard or other options other than returning to the home screen, and only a restart will clear it...for a little while anyway. I have had the issue repeatedly and restarts are not a solution. That is a workaround.

Someone would have to report that to Apple then if you feel it is something that needs fixing. This is not Apple, this is a user to user support forum and Apple does not participate here. If you wish to let Apple know of a bug, then use the feedback link and mark it a bug. www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html otherwise, you can use the Contact Support link at the top of the page here to contact Apple Support and let them know.

It’s definitely a strange bug; restarting fixes the problem for me, but I don’t want to have to restart my phone every time it happens. This may cause me to consider android if it’s not fixed.