Even as Apple embraces AI in iOS 18, it is improving users’ ability to get answers in a more traditional way: by Highlighted research feature. Spotlight Search can be accessed by swiping down in the middle of the home screen, and it already helps iPhone users discover things on their devices and on the web — the latter as an alternative to using Google Search. With iOS 18, Apple is making it easier for people to discover content within their apps using natural — or “semantic” — language queries.
Already, Spotlight was able to search for content in developer apps, but would only return results when search terms exactly matched. With the addition of semantic search capabilities this year, people will be able to search for content in apps using search terms that are very similar in meaning, Apple told developers at WWDC 2024 this week.
With the Basic highlight frameDevelopers can donate content they want to make searchable via Spotlight, which is stored in a private index on users’ devices and cannot be accessed by other apps. With new semantic capabilities, Spotlight’s understanding of developer content will be greatly improved as users will be able to search for content within apps in their own way. These types of search queries leverage machine learning models that are downloaded to the device, run in the app process, and can be loaded or unloaded at any time, Apple said.
Additionally, when using Spotlight search, developers can help improve their app’s search result rankings over time by sending signals to Spotlight when an iPhone owner interacts with one of their results.
For example, if someone is searching for a specific local hiking trail, semantic search capabilities will be able to find results relevant to the user’s search query, using entities they understand such as trail location or specific keywords, even if they are not present in path name and they were not exactly identical. Additionally, the developer can set higher priorities for some of its content, as needed. This allows them to do things like mark a track a user has saved as a favorite to rank higher in search results.
The end result is that a person searches for a specific path using a natural language query in Spotlight, finds the path they want more easily through these enhanced results, and can then click on a result to be taken directly to the path page in the Masarat developer journey. Apple indicated that this update also helps Siri better understand the content of the application.
While it’s not as exciting as AI-powered Siri or ChatGPT integration, this type of under-the-hood update will provide an improved experience for iPhone users who turn to Spotlight to find information from their apps — or even for those who use Spotlight as an alternative to web search.