In Blogger, showing search button (facility) in mobile view by changing Theme from Simple Bold to Contempo Light

Last updated 16th March 2023

Off and on, I had struggled to figure out how to get the search widget of my Simple Bold theme to show in mobile view. Note that it showed properly on desktop view. Also note that I had chosen the setting to show mobile view on mobile (and not desktop view which is the default, if I recall correctly).

I had tried out some of the steps suggested in some pages I got through Google search but was not meeting with success. 

Today I tried again on my spiritual blog, ravisiyer.blogspot.com , and was largely successful. [On mobile, the link will show in mobile view by default. On desktop, to see in mobile view, use: ravisiyer.blogspot.com?m=1 .] 

No sidebar widgets in mobile view, please help!, https://support.google.com/blogger/thread/35369310 had an entry from teloth98 on 26th March 2020 wherein he/she said that changing from Simple Theme to Awesome resulted in the widgets/gadgets being shown on mobile (in Awesome theme). On switching back to Simple theme, he/she writes, "my gadgets were still there".

I tried out changing the theme to some theme I don't recall now and it showed a magnifying glass search icon on the top right in mobile view. I switched back to Simple Bold and checked again but the search icon did not show. I did not wait to check if it shows up after multiple refreshes of the screen.

I decided to switch to a theme which shows the magnifying glass icon (Search icon) and settled on Contempo Light. The search icon got shown both on desktop and mobile views. The other widgets either got moved to some menu or were made hidden. I went to Layout and made one or two widgets visible after which they showed up in the menu.

If one goes to the blog home page, the menu button is shown (on top left). But if one goes to a particular page (post), the menu button is not shown! Instead there is a back arrow icon which leads one to the home page where the menu icon is shown.

Search button is shown both on home page and on individual pages.

I plan to use this Contempo Light theme for few days and see if it works out well. If it works out then I plan to change this blog's theme too, to Contempo Light.

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Contempo Light gives a similar display on both desktop and mobile.

Saw that Pages gadget on right hand side column in Layout with entry name "Page List (Top)" gets shown below Blog header with initial entries shown and then a More button (if I recall correctly). On mobile, clicking the More button showed menu of other entries but initial part of the entry was obscured. On desktop, clicking the More button showed menu of other entries without truncation. Could not fix that problem on mobile view.

Solution was to create a new Pages gadget in "Sidebar (Bottom)" part of Layout. I re-created four of the earlier entries in it, dropped two entries, and also made the old Pages gadget hidden. Note that all the visible gadgets in "Sidebar (Bottom)" layout entry are shown as part of left-top three-segment menu shown on blog home page.

Now there was no truncation problem for the Pages gadget entries in Mobile View (or in Desktop View).

The menu entries were too close to each other. So I added a dummy "." entry between the entries. That seems to resolve the too-close problem well.

Also changed order of some gadgets in "Sidebar (Bottom)".

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16th March 2023 Update: Changed this blog template to Contempo Light too, as it is working well with ravisiyer.blogspot.com