so my issue is that even though I disable the front-end search settings (in: Frontend Search Settings options > Show search settings on the frontend?) the icon and drop down still display in the front-end.
This happens even though I have cleared the cache and refreshed the browser page.
Yes. It’s a recently discovered bug, which is not yet fixed in the current version on codecanyon. However here is an attachement of the latest working copy of the plugin, it will be uploaded to codecanyon in 2 days (after brief testing).
Please deactivate and delete the old one, and install this one instead.