Even Apple AI adopted in iOS 18, It’s working to improve users’ ability to get answers the traditional way: through Spotlight Search feature. Spotlight Search, accessed by swiping down in the middle of the home screen, already helps iPhone users find things on their device and on the web — the latter a Option to use Google searchWith iOS 18, Apple is making it easier for people to discover content inside its apps using natural language — or “semantic” — queries.
Spotlight is already capable of searching for content in developers’ apps, but it will only return results if the search terms match exactly. With the addition of semantic search capabilities this year, people will be able to search for content across apps using search terms that are similar in meaning, Apple told developers. This week at WWDC 2024,
with Core Spotlight FrameworkDevelopers can donate the content they want to make it searchable through Spotlight, which is stored in a private index on users’ devices that other apps cannot access. With the new semantic capabilities, Spotlight’s understanding of developers’ content will be greatly improved as users will be able to discover content inside the app in their own way. Apple said that these types of search queries leverage machine learning models that are downloaded to the device and run in the app’s process and can be loaded or unloaded at any time.
Additionally, when Spotlight search is used, developers can help improve the ranking of their app’s search results over time by sending a signal to Spotlight when an iPhone owner engages with one of their results.
For example, if someone is searching for a particular local hiking trail, semantic search capabilities will be able to find results related to the user’s search query, using entities like the trail’s location or specific keywords, even if they are not in the trail’s name and are not an exact match. Also, the developer can set higher priorities for some of their content as needed. This allows them to do things like mark trails saved by the user as favorites to rank higher in search results.
The end result is that a person searches for a given trail using a natural language query in Spotlight, can easily find the trail they want through these improved results, then can tap on a result to go directly to the trail’s page in the developer’s Hiking Trails app. Apple explained that this update also helps Siri better understand the app’s content.
Though it’s not as exciting as AI-powered Siri Or ChatGPT integrationThis type of built-in update would provide a better experience for iPhone users who use Spotlight to get information from their apps — or even for those who use Spotlight as an alternative to web searching.
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