Search from your Home Screen

Spotlight search has been around for years, although iOS 15 makes some nice enhancements to it, including the ability to start a search right from your Lock Screen.

As Apple explains, just swipe down, and start typing. Before you type anything in, however, you may also want to review the suggestions Apple offers up. You’ll get up to eight suggested apps based on your usage history, which includes not only how frequently you open apps, but when and where you typically open them. iOS will also offer up some other suggested shortcuts for other things, such as sending a text message to somebody you regularly communicate with, handing off from another device, running a shortcut, or starting a workout.

Once you start typing, the results will be filtered automatically to match whatever you’re typing in, whether that’s a contact, calendar appointment, email, message conversation, note, file, web page, or an app. Spotlight makes a great app launcher, too, since it’s often faster to pull it up and start typing the name of an app than it is to go and look for the icon — especially if it’s hidden away in your App Library.

You can choose what appears in these search results by going into Settings > Siri & Search, so if there’s anything you’d rather not see here, you can simply switch it off entirely. There’s also no need to worry about privacy and security — even though iOS 15 lets you call up Spotlight from the Lock Screen, it will only be available once Face ID has recognized you and unlocked your iPhone.