Yeah, wtf were they thinking when they reversed the sides of the screen the photo gallery and front/back camera switch were on. It's been the same since my Pixel 1. Why?!
Yep, first thing I do whenever I add an account to Gmail is disable inbox sorting — presto, zero ads. This has been going on for years, but if OP just made a new Gmail account for the first time since 2013ish, it could be the first time they've seen the ads. Feels bad.
Ah yes, I see. That's both intuitive but also weirdly telegraphed. The top bar says "[search term] all", meaning posts from all time I guess, but I thought it meant it was searching all communities. Thanks!
When I use the search bar it searches everything, across all instances, and there is no obvious way to narrow results. Apologies if I'm stupidly missing something!