I love Sliding Panel. I like being able to slide the panel out with my right hand because it allows a more comfortable range of motion rather than reaching across and swiping from the edge. It’s the same reason I don’t have the nav gestures on Pixel and like to use the old school buttons instead

Also agreed with the second point, I know it’s a search bar but a slightly lighter bg with a pill shaped object would make it stand out more as a text field

This is one nice UX thing I noticed that Threads did and made it much easier to follow people from the main feed.