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Spotlight search: looking through third-party apps | iOS 11 Guide

Spotlight search enables you to search your phone for contacts, apps, music, video, audio books, notes, emails, calendar entries, messages and more.

Spotlight is located at the top of any Home screen page and can be opened by swiping down from the middle of the screen. Tap in the text box at the top to type your search.

You can search for practically anything here and Spotlight will do its best to give you a relevant spread of results. It will show a mix of content from your device – apps, contacts, emails etc. – along with results from the internet. Sometimes you might even see results that link directly into other apps. Tap any of the results to be taken to the relevant app.

Siri Suggestions

As part of the Spotlight view, Siri will suggest apps that you use frequently or have recently installed, and in some cases will vary the suggestions based on your location or the time of day – for example, if you always open News at breakfast you may see it suggested in the mornings. Tap Show More to expand from four to eight suggested apps. It’s a good way to quickly access your most used apps.

If you don’t like Siri’s proactive suggestions, you can turn them off by opening the Settings app and tapping General followed by Spotlight Search. Swipe the toggle to switch off Siri Suggestions for good.