Spotlight Search has been in iOS for ages, but how many people use it? iOS 16 adds a little button that makes it easier for millions of users to discover.
What is the MOST important feature of the iPhone 16?
A major problem with modern devices is discoverability. App developers and OS developers like Apple and Google keep adding new features, but if users don’t know about them or can’t easily find them, they don’t know they’re there. Take Spotlight, the built-in, system-wide search feature on iOS devices and Macs. It’s been on the iPhone since iOS 3 in 2009, but it’s so hidden that most people don’t know it’s there. A new button, front and center (bottom) of the home screen, is designed to change that.
"The pull-down search has been my first stop for searching for maybe 3 or 4 versions of iOS instead of in a browser. By putting 'Search' right on the Home Screen, it seems like Apple thinks it's ready for it, and is encouraging casual users who aren't familiar with the pull-down search to search with Spotlight first," iOS power-user Ipedro said in a MacRumors forum thread.
Spotlight is Apple's search engine, and it's built into just about everything. It first appeared in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in 2005, and has been draining hard drives and batteries indexing ever since. Before that, there was no built-in way to find a file based on its contents. You could search by name, and your Mac would brute-force its way through every file on your system until it found it.
