A Feature Request was previously logged for this. See How To Disable/ Hide Selection Tools and Smart Search for Published Apps .
Customer and Partner feedback determined that this feature is still being requested:
Allow for clever hiding / disabling of the selection tools and smart search.
There needs to be a way to disable the selection tool when the app is published so that consumers do not have access to all of the available fields in the app, but the developer still has access to the fields when they are designing the app.
Using the 'hide' options (as documented in the workaround article) makes the field unavailable when in edit mode which is not desireable.
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