The Wonder of Tech

You are here: Home / Cell Phones / iPhone / How to Use Spotlight Search on iPhone and iPad

/

How to Use Spotlight Search on iPhone and iPad

The estimated reading time for this post is 2 minutes

Your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch have a powerful search tool called Spotlight. If you’re looking for an app, text message, email, song, contact, or other information on your iDevice, you can use Spotlight to find what you’re looking for easily.

Spotlight Search iOS

If you use Spotlight a lot, learn how you can make it work best for you. If you haven’t used Spotlight yet, learn how you can use it to help you find items on your iDevice.

How to Use Spotlight

To use Spotlight, swipe down on the screen to reveal a search bar at the top.

Spotlight Search iDevices

 

Start typing the name of the app, contact or keyword you’re trying to find. The results will appear just as soon as you start typing.

You’ll also see options at the bottom of your search results to search on the Web or Wikipedia.

Spotlight Search iPhone iPad

Note if you’re trying to find an app that’s in an app folder, Spotlight search will show you the name of the folder where the app resides.

iPhone App Search

You can also search within individual apps such as Mail, Notes, Contacts, Reminders, Music, Videos and more. Look for the search bar at the top of the screen when you’re in the app.

Where Spotlight Searches

You can use Spotlight to find:

  • Apps
  • Email
  • Text messages
  • Calendar entries
  • Podcasts
  • Songs
  • Videos
  • Audiobooks
  • Reminders
  • Notes

How to Make Spotlight Search Work Best for You

By default, Spotlight searches all of the above places but having all of those search results on your screen may be a wee bit more information than you need.

To limit the Spotlight search results, go to Settings => General => Spotlight Search and then click on the categories you want to search. Uncheck anything you don’t want to search.

Spotlight Search iPhone categories

This can be very helpful if you find you’re getting search results you don’t want or you’re not getting enough search results.

You can also change the order of the places Spotlight searches. Tap the three bars on the right side of a category and slide it up or down to change the order of the results.

Spotlight Search Custom

What Else You Should Know

In email, Spotlight only searches the names of the sender and the recipients and the subject line. If you want to search for words in the body of an email, go to the Mail app and search there. Spotlight only searches within the email accounts in the native Mail app.

In calendar, Spotlight searches events one year before and one year  ahead. If you have multiple events using the same keyword or repeating events, Spotlight will show you the event closest to the current date.

In text messages, Spotlight searches the name of the sender and the body of the text message.

Your Thoughts

Do you use Spotlight search to find items on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch? Has Spotlight ever helped you find an important item? Have you ever customized your Spotlight search results? Let us know in the Comments section below!

___________________

Carolyn is temporarily away on vacation, busy honing her Spotlight search results. The Wonder of Tech will continue to publish articles about fun and useful tech while she’s gone. Carolyn will respond to comments when she returns from her trip.

 

Tweet78
Share
Share12
Pin1
91 Shares

Subscribe to The Wonder of Tech!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Pramod says

    i would be searching for this functionality/tool and trying it out on my dad’s iphone tonight …:D thanks for sharing the information Carolyn !

    -Pramod

  2. Jens P. Berget says

    Hi Carolyn,

    I don’t use Spotlight search on my iPhone and iPad much. I usually just search the web on iOS, and I start Safari and do it the old fashioned way (by using Google). But, what you’re showing here makes a lot of sense.

  3. Eugene says

    Thanks for sharing information for us. The topics is really help for me. Besides thank for giving opportunity for giving comment for us.

  4. Mahendra says

    Me also like your Google Power search article , and Spot lite search also give me better information, You all article give latest trick about net and latest phone’s unique information Really its awesome Thank you so much from your daily visitor.

  5. Vincent says

    This app is relatively unknown in the technical apps section I think, as I didn’t hear much about it previously. I read your post thoroughly and dig through it deeply. Going to give it a try today. You post is compelling me to doing that. 🙂

  6. Praveen Rajarao (@techivy) says

    Carolyn – It has been a while since I visited your site, and it is nice to be back.

    I have been using this spotlight search for a while now, though I did not know it was called that 🙂

    Also I did not know that it also searched through my mails, that is news to me. It is a very powerful search tool and makes it a lot easy to find my stuff.

    • Carolyn Nicander Mohr says

      Hi Praveen, So glad to see you back online! You were definitely missed. Yes, you can customize Spotlight Search to make it work best for you. I’m glad you found both Spotlight Search and this article to be helpful to you.

  7. Aditya Dey says

    Thanks Carolyn, it’s again something new for me as I was unaware about this app before reading your article……The name itself (spotlight search) is crazy enough to give it a shot….what say??

  8. raj says

    Nice information carolyn. I’ve never used this feature with my iPhone before. It is really a great feature of which I was not aware about. Thanks for sharing this informative article with us.

  9. Hariot says

    Excellent info shared Carolyn. I really appreciate your efforts in creating this article.
    –
    Hariot – ( iPhone App Developer ) @ VITEB

  10. Plomero says

    Thank you, after reading your post. I realized that I have a lot to get even to my mobile phone