Spotlight has been around for almost two decades on macOS and came to the iPhone in 2009. The built-in, system-wide search tool makes for a super quick way to open apps, find a specific contact, or start a web search, but it has evolved to do much more than that since its debut.

In iOS 15, Spotlight is more potent than ever with a whole host of new capabilities that make it the best iPhone search tool. Here's everything new in Spotlight in iOS 15.

Rich search results

Spotlight has been redesigned to show you more content at a glance when you search for information about music artists, entertainers, TV shows, and movies.

Tap a search result for a musician or band, for example, and you'll get biographical info, links to albums, their social media accounts, music videos, suggested websites, and much more. Similarly, a search for a movie or TV show will show you cast and crew info, a link to the Apple TV app, show trailers, links to sites like IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, and more.

In addition to famous people, these rich search results extend to your contacts, so you'll get one page of all the essential information about someone you need to reach. That includes data from their contact card plus quick access to photos they feature in, links they have shared with you, Messages and Mail interactions, shared notes, and more.

Photos search

Spotlight in iOS 15 now allows for Photos search without going into the Photos app specifically. When you search for photos of a particular person, animal, location, item, or similarly identifiable thing in Spotlight, you'll be given relevant results from your Photos library. Tapping a result gives you quick access to sharing options, or you can hit "Search in app" to see even more results in the Photos app.

Spotlight even incorporates the new Live Text feature to search your photos for the words of your search and will present these results in their section where possible. That's helpful if you're searching for a screenshot of a recipe or photo that includes a road sign.

Web image search

In addition to searching across your own Photos library, Spotlight can be used to search for images from the web, so you don't have to head to Google Images to do the same thing. Tapping an image result will then show you more images that are similar to the one you selected.

If you don't see web image results with your search by default, you can always append the word "images" to your search to prompt Spotlight into showing you some.

Install and delete apps

A minor but useful feature addition in Spotlight in iOS 15 is the ability to install apps directly from a search. So instead of being booted out to the App Store or seeing an App Store interstitial, you can authorize the download right in Spotlight.

Conversely, you can search for an app already on your device and delete it from Spotlight. This is an excellent addition for anyone who has far too many apps on their devices and doesn't want to search through Home screens, folders, or the App Library to find it.

On the subject of apps, you can now drag and drop apps from Spotlight to your Home screen. This is more obvious and works better in iPadOS 15, where you can still see part of your Home screen, but it also works on iPhone if you start dragging the app icon, close Spotlight, and then position the icon on your Home screen.

Improved Maps results

Maps results have gotten some attention in Spotlight in iOS 15 with a redesigned look for quick access to critical information and the incorporation of App Clips. For venues that support the feature, you'll be able to do things like view menus, make reservations, book tickets, see showtimes, and more.

Lock Screen and Notification Center access

The number of places you can access Spotlight has also expanded in iOS 15. Now, in addition to swiping down on any Home screen, you can perform the same gesture on the Lock screen of your iPhone or iPad as well as in Notification Center.

Importantly, when your device is locked, searches won't bring up any personal information about you or your contacts, photos, or messages and will instead provide web results, Wikipedia content, news, and other general information.

While looking at your own Face ID-enabled device while searching, you will see personal results since your phone or iPad will unlock, making it easy to pick up your phone and do a quick search without thinking about it.

A few users across the web, myself included, seem to be experiencing issues with Spotlight search on iPhone and iOS 14. It's unclear how widespread the problem is or what might be causing it, but if you have run into this there is an easy fix.

Blank screen

This issue means that when a user on an iPhone (this problem doesn't seem to extend to any other type of device) swipes down on the Home Screen to open Spotlight search they are met with a blank screen. Similarly, swiping left and tapping in the Spotlight search field yields the same results. As shown in the video below:

The fix

We too have been experiencing this issue, however have found that resetting your iPhone seems to do the trick. Here's what you need to do:

1. Press and quickly release the Volume Up button.
2. Press and quickly release the Volume Down button.
3. Press and hold the Side button until you see the Apple logo.

If this doesn't work, you can also switch your iPhone off through the Settings app:

1. Tap on the Settings app on your iPhone screen.
2. Select General.
3. Tap Shut Down.

If you're on an older device like iPhone 8, follow these steps:

1. Press and hold the Top (or Side) button on your mobile device until the power off slider appears.
2. Drag the slider from left to right to turn your device off.
3. To turn your device back on, hold the Top (or Side) button again until you see the Apple logo appear.

As we said, once the iPhone rebooted, we certainly noticed that Spotlight search's functionality returned. Our device was running iOS 14.2.1, but users on other software iterations, including the iOS 14.3 beta seem to be highlighting the issue too.

Siri Search Suggestions, formerly called Spotlight, formerly called Siri Suggested Apps, is a quick way to search, not only your apps and contacts, but the web, your calendar events, maps, and in iOS 11 and newer, your emails and many of your apps (including third-party apps). Here's how to access and use it.

• How to access Siri Search Suggestions
• How to use Siri Search Suggestions
• How to enable Siri and Search for your apps
• How to turn off Siri Suggestions in Search
• how to turn off Siri Suggestions in Look Up
• How to disable Siri and Search for your apps

How to access Siri Search Suggestions

Now that Apple has added a few different Home screen gestures, accessing Spotlight (or Siri Search Suggestions) is a little more particular.

While on the Home screen, place your finger lightly near the Center of the screen and pull down.

If you pull from the very top of the screen, you'll get Notifications. Basically, from the center of the screen and below will give you Siri Search Suggestions when you pull down.

How to use Siri Search Suggestions

Once you've accessed it by pulling down on your Home screen, you can search for practically anything using Siri Search Suggestions.

1. Tap the Text field to call up your keyboard.
2. Type in your search query.
3. Scroll through the results to find what you're looking for.

How to enable Siri and Search for your apps

Starting with iOS 11, Apple added the ability to allow Siri to search within your apps for specific data relating to your query. Not just Apple's built-in apps, either. You can allow Siri to search your third-party apps for specific information.

Siri and Search is on by default in most cases, but you can manually enable it at any time.

1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap Siri & Search.

3. Select an app.
4. Tap the Search & Siri Suggestions switch to turn it on.

How to turn off Siri Suggestions in search

If you'd prefer to be able to search your iPhone or iPad without having Siri suggesting to you what apps to use or websites to check out, you can always turn off Siri Suggestions in the menu.

1. Launch the **Settings app* from the Home screen.
2. Tap Siri & Search.
3. Tap the Suggestions in Search On/Off switch. When the switch is gray, the feature will be turned off.

You can turn Siri Suggestions at any time by following the same steps.

How to turn off Siri Suggestions in Look Up

If you'd prefer to be able to use the Look Up feature on your iPhone or iPad without having Siri suggesting any apps or websites, you can always turn off Siri Suggestions in the menu.

1. Launch the **Settings app* from the Home screen.
2. Tap Siri & Search.
3. Tap the Suggestions in Look Up On/Off switch. When the switch is gray, the feature will be turned off.

You can turn Siri Suggestions at any time by following the same steps.

How to disable Siri and Search for your apps

If you don't like the idea of Siri looking through your apps in search of content, you can lock down your apps and keep Siri from accessing them.

1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap Siri & Search.

3. Select an app.
4. Tap the Search & Siri Suggestions switch to turn it off.

Any questions?

Do you have any questions about how to access and use Siri Search Suggestions on your iPhone and iPad? Put them in the comments and we'll help you out.

Updated October 2017: Added sections on how to turn off Siri Suggestions in Search and Look Up.

A Siri that's based on typing rather than talking is something I've had on my wish list for years. iOS 9 got us some of the way there—Spotlight merged, in part, with Siri to provide for better, more contextual search and access to a wealth of useful information. In other words, queries have largely been handled. What's left is the ability to execute commands, and that's why I continue to hope for more in iOS 10.

Siri 'voice free'

Since its debut as part of iOS 5 in 2011, Apple has made incredible progress expanding the company's virtual personal assistant, Siri. It's moved onto our roads with Eyes Free and CarPlay, onto our wrists with Apple Watch, and into our living rooms with Apple TV. It speaks more languages than ever before, including Chinese and Hebrew, and is beginning to handle multi-language queries so you can ask for an English movie in French, for example. Siri can even do Voice ID now, so it can better differentiate your voice from others'.

No matter how enabling and useful Siri is, though, there will be times when it's simply not possible or socially acceptable to talk out loud to our phones or tablets. In those situations, being able to type "Cupertino weather" or even "Text Georgia I'll be late" would be incredibly useful.

iOS 9 made the first one possible. Simply pull down the search box from any Home screen or swipe over to Siri Recommendations on the "minus one" Home screen, type in "cupertino weather", and you get your answer. The second one, however, remains a beautiful dream. Type in "text Georgia I'll be late" and get... some offers to search the Web, App Store, or Maps.

Nature language is powerful. Siri has shown that for voice. The new smarter search has shown that, in part, for text. So has apps like Fantastical. It lets you add calendar appointments and reminders by merely typing them.

What makes this feature so tantalizing is that Siri can already handle commands input by text. Once you've made a voice query or command, an "edit" button appears. I can say "what's the weather in Cupertino" and Siri will tell me. Then I can tap the "Edit" button, change the text to "Text Georgia I'll be late", and Siri will quickly execute the input-via-text command and prepare the message.

That's what makes it so easy to imagine doing the same absent the first step: pulling down or swiping over into the search box and typing out the command to begin with.

Quick access to quick actions

Multiple points of entry into the Siri system don't increase complexity—they increase accessibility. If you don't want to access Siri via text, keep using voice. Can't use voice? Text is there for you. By making text an option, it opens the full range of Siri functionality to even more people in an even wider range of circumstances.

There are a lots of precedents. Quicksilver, LaunchBar, and Alfred have all offered text-based quick actions on the Mac for years. Just Type from webOS and Type and Go from BlackBerry have tried the same on mobile. Launch Center Pro has even made an icon-driven version work as far as current iOS limitations will allow.

With text-based access to Siri's engine, "Text Georgia I'm be late" is just one example of the type of quick-action that could be efficiently typed out. "Tweet Guy Wow, arrow was bananas!" could instantly send your status to social media. "Meeting with Mikah and Lory at 6 pm tomorrow" could add an event to your calendar.

I realize many people might not find this functionality valuable, especially since, in the years following my first request for it, iOS 9 has gotten us some of the way there. For people for whom typing is second nature, and for anyone with low or no hearing who still wants to tap into full-on Siri, however, it could be invaluable.

Like Notification Center, Control Center, the fast app switcher, or Siri over voice, no one has to access them who doesn't want to. This isn't about adding complexity—it's about increasing accessibility.

An (even) smarter search

There's a lot I'd like to see from Spotlight and Apple's text-based search in general, including and especially how it works on the stores. Nearest-neighbor and automatic search widening are all solved problems. Typing "Twetbot" should return "Tweetbot", just like it does with Google. Typing "Twitter" should absolutely return the most relevant, not just the most character-matching, results as well. It's incomprehensible that, decades after fuzzy/sloppy search became a thing, this still doesn't work on one of the most popular platforms in the world.

Likewise, there's a lot to talk about when it comes to the core Siri technology itself, especially with how it does—and doesn't—interface with the other apps and accessories that are increasingly important in a world where phones are not longer being built as platforms but are now the foundation upon which broader platforms are being built.

I'll save that for a future article, though. For now, iOS 10 is coming, and I'm hoping an even smarter search system, with quick action command support, will come with it. Type "fav" into Siri if you agree. Type "retweet" if you don't.

I've submitted this feature request to Apple: rdar://26213732.

It started life on the Mac, but Spotlight quickly moved to the iPhone and then iPad as well. Over the years, Spotlight hasn't just gotten more knowledgeable in more areas, but its gotten smarter. Now, with Spotlight Suggestions, it can not only help you find the information already on your device, but it can help you find out about what's happening in the world around.

It might not be my dream for a full-on, text-based front-end for Siri, at least not yet, but it's getting closer!

Twitter

Interested in what's hot? With Spotlight, you can search for Twitter accounts and hashtags. Not every account or hashtag, mind you, but the more popular and trending ones at any given time. Just start typing with a @ for people and # for hashtags and Spotlight will do the rest.

Wikipedia

Want just the facts? Wikipedia contains a wealth of crowd-sourced information, and with Spotlight you can quickly find out about almost any person, place, or thing. Simply type in what you're looking for, just like a search engine. Tap the Wikipedia result to get an excerpt, and tap See Full Article to go to the website in Safari.

News and Sports

What's happening? Spotlight can show you any news stories that may be trending. Realistically, this has turned out to be almost exclusively useful for sports headlines so you can catch up on any games you might have missed.

Restaurants + Businesses

Feeling hungry? Type in the name of a restaurant or even just the type of food you're interested to see a list of nearby places. Tap one and you'll go straight to that restaurant's page in Maps, so you can get more information and directions straight there. It also works for businesses in general, just type the name.

iTunes + iBooks

Are you not entertained? Enter the name of a movie, TV show, song, or book into Spotlight and if it's on your iPhone or iPad, you can start playing or reading it immediately. If not, you can go right to the iTunes or iBooks Store to get it.

App Store

Looking for an app? Same thing: Start typing the name and if it's on your iPhone or iPad, you can launch it right away. If not, you can go straight to the App Store and download it.

Web search

Need more? Spotlight can also search the web for you. Enter in what you're looking for and Spotlight will provide suggested websites and, for trending topics, the most popular results from Microsoft's Bing search engine.

The classics

Spotlight still includes all its classic functionality as well, including letting you quickly search for contacts, notes, events, and more. Start typing in the person, place, or thing you want to find, and Spotlight will start showing you matches.

Bonus: Safari!

Apple has also built Spotlight Suggestions right into the Safari web browser so, if you're already on the web, you don't even have to go back to the Home screen first. Just type what you're looking for right into the Safari bar and your Spotlight results will appear alongside Top Hits and standard results.

More secret shortcuts

There are tons of ways to get faster and even more productive with your iPhone. Spotlight is just one of them. For more, check out the rest of our secret shortcut series. And if you have any tips or tricks of your own, please share them in the comments!

• Secret Apple Watch controls
• Secret Siri commands
• Secret Safari shortcuts
• Secret Mail shortcuts
• Secret keyboard shortcuts
• Secret power-saving shortcuts
• Secret Apple TV controls

While most of us have our favorite Twitter apps, if you don't have yours handy, or you're already using Apple's Spotlight search tool, you can now bring up links to popular people and trending tweets by typing in an @username or #hashtag.

Note: Spotlight isn't searching Twitter per se. It's including Twitter in the pool of information it digs through, but it will only show Twitter results if they're especially relevant. So, Spotlight won't show every username or every hashtag, just really popular ones around the time and place you're searching.

How to search a Twitter hashtag or user with Spotlight for iOS

1. Pull down from your iPhone or iPad's Home screen to launch Spotlight.
2. Type in a username or hashtag. For example, you can type in @imuggle or #AppleWatch.
3. You should see search results under the Twitter section.

Apple guru Dave Marra recently tweeted a great Mac tip that I'm going to share with you. Make sure to check out his Marrathon.com site for more great Mac tips.

I have to admit that I'm totally ashamed I didn't know this until just the other day, because Marra tells me it's been around since OS X 10.7 Lion.

How to access OS X System Preferences using the Dock

1. Open your Dock.
2. Click on the System Preferences icon and hold it.
3. A pop-up menu appears showing you all available system preferences. Select whatever preference you need and the Mac will open it.

How to access OS X System Preferences using Spotlight

Don't want to use your mouse or trackpad? Do it with the keyboard instead.

1. Hold down command
2. Press the space bar to bring up Spotlight.
3. Type in the name of the system preference you want to open

Spotlight should take care of the rest.

Any questions? Let me know.

Sometimes you just need more work space on your Mac. You could appease this by buying a second monitor, but it may well be that you need this space while on traveling — a place where a second full-sized screen becomes much more cumbersome than helpful. The solution? Use your iPad.

Duet Display is a tethered second-screen option that lets you borrow your iPad's Retina display for your Mac. You can display anything you like on that second screen — including full-framerate video — and interact with that content directly on the iPad, as well.

Like Astropad, Duet Display is actually made up of two different apps, for Mac and iOS respectively. The Mac companion app is free; the iOS app is $16. Setting up Duet is dead simple: Just tether your iOS device to your Mac via Lightning or Dock connector and launch both apps, and your screen will be up and running in no time. I also appreciated how quickly Duet loads when you're reconnecting your iPad and Mac — as long as the Mac app's running in the background, when you launch the iPad version of Duet, your second screen appears almost instantly.

Duet boasts full Retina resolution on your iPad at 60FPS, and it's no joke: The screen is crisp and clear, with little-to-no possible lag. I only ran into a delay — and a millisecond one at that — when moving windows around or using Photoshop tools; contained items (like YouTube and Hulu clips) ran seamlessly and in sync with their audio, though that audio only plays on the Mac.

The iPad's touch controls are sadly a little more lacking, in part due to OS X simply not being made for fingers. One finger taps are functional enough, but two-finger scrolling is a tad jerky, and trying to work with Pixelmator brushes is downright impossible. I'm guessing it's a lag input issue, because those tasks work perfectly well when using a trackpad or mouse.

Duet is technically also usable on an iPhone — any device running iOS 7 or later, really. But the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus offer so little real estate when it comes to full-sized windows that it's hard to justify using the device for such a purpose; if an iPhone is truly your only second screen, it might be better to just use a Mountie and an app built for what you want to display.

The bottom line

Though Duet suffers somewhat when it comes to using the iPad's capacitative screen to touch and move windows, as a straight secondary display it's an excellent tool in your iPad's toolbox. I've been using it all the time alongside my MacBook Air, and it also makes a big difference in space-constrained offices where you might not have the option for a larger secondary display.

The iPad's made great progress in the sketching world, but it's still been hampered by imprecise screen mapping and styluses that can't perfectly replicate pressure. The solution from Astro HQ's Astropad is to map the iPad to a different screen entirely — that of your Mac.

Astropad does for creative pros what Duet Display did for second-screen enthusiasts: Not only does it provide a high-quality, high-framerate mirrored display on your iPad that you can draw on, but Astropad goes a step further and integrates with three of the iPad's top-selling pressure-sensitive styluses to offer you full pressure support in your Mac app of choice.

It may not be a true Wacom Cintiq experience, but it sure comes close to fooling me.

When I first heard about Astropad, I took it with a fair grain of salt: mirroring a display on the iPad is hard enough already; mirroring wirelessly a step above that; and doing so at a framerate that doesn't impede creative professionals almost impossible. After all, before Astropad, I'd tried using Duet Display to sketch, and while it sort of worked, it clearly wasn't designed for creative pros.

Astropad is — and that makes all the difference.

The tech

The companion iPad and Mac apps get such impressive results thanks to Astro engineers Matt Ronge and Giovanni Donelli's Liquid technology, which they claim renders 2x faster than AirPlay and clearer than the highest-quality JPEG. Though I was skeptical reading this on paper, in practice I was blown away. Astropad feels seamless, with no lag or artifacting occurring during the drawing process.

Astropad does this by emphasizing sketching tools over traditional mirrored or second-screen display. There are two different modes: Draw and Move & Zoom; the former allows you to interact with either the screen or your canvas, while the latter is focused entirely on panning and zooming the selection of your screen you've chosen.

When in Move & Zoom mode, the screen intentionally artifacts and drops transparency, assuming that you're readjusting your canvas rather than truly needing to do much else with the screen. (Presumably, that's what your Mac is for.) Moving windows in Draw mode, too, produces temporary artifacting and rendering — but it's done on a per window basis, so you can move parts of your screen freely without worrying about delayed frame rates covering up the screen.

Drawing, though, never has artifacting. It's done smoothly, with no lag or pixel offset, and you can use either your finger, a capacitative stylus, or one of three supported pressure-sensitive options (Wacom's Creative Stylus, Adonit's Jot Touch, and the Jaja Hex3, with support for FiftyThree's Pencil coming soon).

And that's all on a wireless connection. Make the connection wired, and the resulting experience on your iPad is better, faster, clearer. It's an incredible feat — and moreover, one that doesn't destroy either your laptop or iPad's battery.

The experience

The most important part of an app like Astropad is the drawing experience, and I'm happy to say it doesn't disappoint. I did a quick couple of sketches and colorations using Astropad — both using my finger and the Jot Touch stylus — and each time it got a bit easier to control and work with.

Astropad by default has a lovely sidebar designed to work with all major drawing apps (like, for instance, Adobe Photoshop): From there you can toggle quick adjustments like brush size; switching from the brush to eraser tool; undo and redo; zooming in and out on the canvas; as well as access to settings, keyboard modifiers, and switching between Draw and Move & Zoom mode.

You can also use two two-finger gestures to either zoom or pan your canvas, though I found those slightly harder to implement when not using a pressure-sensitive stylus. It's also worth noting that they're primarily designed for in-app canvas manipulation, not panning across your display screen.

Sketching may not be as controlled as using a Wacom tablet, but it's miles beyond any previous mirrored-screen experience, and it feels a lot more precise, to me, than working within an iPad app. That may in part be the zoom levels I'm able to get on Photoshop in contrast with a mobile app, or that I'm more comfortable with the app's tools — but I'll take it. And being able to use pressure-sensitive tools in Photoshop via an iPad? It's an embarrassment of riches.

Wired, Astropad is gorgeous; but it's the wireless aspect that truly makes me love working with it. (The video above is a quick example of wireless sketching and coloring in Photoshop using Astropad.) I was able to do two of my test sketches while sitting on the couch, no power cords needed for either my iPad nor my Mac, and it felt comfortable in a way drawing with a Cintiq never has.

Bottom line

Astropad probably won't replace a Wacom Cintiq at your studio, but it's an incredible tool for working on the go or travel, and may work perfectly if you're more dabbler than pro artist. In short: If you're a digital artist with an iPad, you need to give Astropad a try. Lucky for us, Astro HQ offers a free seven-day trial for the Mac software (the iPad app is free to download); after seven days, you'll hopefully have a better idea of whether the $50 app fits into your workflow. I know I'm incredibly excited to have it in my tool bin.

Astropad works with any iOS device running iOS 8 or later (though I had the best luck with the iPad Air 2), and all Macs running OS X 10.9 or later.

• Astropad - $50 - Buy Now

I'll be frank: I hate putting cases on my iPhone. They take away the fit and feel of the device in your hand, they can be overly bulky or clunky, and they almost always get dirty. But after breaking my iPhone 6's screen, I resigned myself to using some sort of cover — no caseless fit and feel is worth a broken glass screen.

Luckily, I've found quite a few awesome iPhone 6 cases in the months since I've started rocking one, the latest of which is Case Scenario's Pantone Universe Cover + Bumper. It's stylish, quirky, and — best of all — super-comfortable to use in-hand.

The thing that struck me about the cases when I first saw them on display at CES this year was their vibrancy — and there's a good reason for that. For this line, Case Scenario partnered with Pantone, best known as one of the color companies in the world for color trends, paint swatches, and the like. The cases come in eight distinct Pantone colors — including Gold Gloss and Silver Sheen — and a spokesperson at CES told me that batches have to be personally approved by a Pantone representative before they get shipped out to the public.

In other words, this Bright Cobalt case I'm currently rocking has been color-matched to be the exact shade of the 19-4037 Bright Cobalt swatch — though a small advisory on the case's inside still suggests using actual Pantone swatches if I plan to do any painting or color theory.

The Pantone marketing is part style gimmick, to be sure, but it works: I thought I was going to hate that little white "Pantone Universe" swatch on the bottom back quarter of the case, but it gives it an odd sort of class and finish that makes this plastic look more distinctive than any other blue-bumpered fare. (In fact, I've had more queries and demands about this case than any previous covering I've had on an iOS device throughout my five-year tenure as an Apple reporter. Funny, that.)

The case itself is a sleek rubberized plastic bumper with a slightly glossy plastic back. The plastic is well made, but not overly bulky or stiff; it both fits snugly around the iPhone 6 and is easy to peel off, reminding me a lot of Apple's iPhone 4 bumpers. Unlike the bumper case, however, this one has a sleek, slightly-glossy plastic backing with the aforementioned Pantone swatch designation in the lower corner. It provides scratch protection and a little bit of added style to the phone without bulking anything up too tremendously. (My magnetic Scosche MagicMount works just fine through the case's backing.)

This case may not do much if you drop your phone off a building, but it's more than adequate for daily stumbles and the occasional person-height drop. It covers the iPhone 6's glass corners and creeps a little bit over the sides, so as to prevent the LCD screen itself from being scratched if you put the phone face-down on a flat surface.

There are cutouts for the headphone port, mic, dock connector, speaker, and Ring/Silent switch; the volume and On/Off buttons are covered in a light, easily-pressable plastic. I normally dislike covered buttons on a case, but these do a great job of keeping dust and the like out of my iPhone's crevices without actually impeding functionality.

Bottom line

I've been impressed with almost every facet of this case: It's durable without being bulky, stylish without being gaudy, functional without an overly flashy price tag, easy to remove and snap back on, and it feels excellent. My only quibble is that the semi-gloss of the back covering has attracted a few scratches and scuffs — but that's after heavy use on a trade show floor and in pockets with keys and miscellany. I'll take a few minor scratches only seen in lamplight when it keeps my phone in pristine condition.

• Case Scenario Pantone Universe - 20€/~$23 U.S. - Buy Now

As my friends, family, and boyfriend would likely tell you if you asked, I'm bad about keeping track of things. I frequently lose my keys, my phone, my iPad, my wallet, and my bag — all within the small confines of my 400 sq ft studio. (I've got a lot of stuff, okay?)

As such, when I first heard about Bluetooth LE trackers like Tile, I was thrilled — but they all had fiddly bits and pieces that made my excitement wane. No way to replace the batteries. Tiny zones. I ended up resigning myself to the fact that the Tile was not, in fact, the droid I was looking for.

Chipolo, on the other hand, might just be the one.

Bitty little color finder

I learned about Chipolo at CES this year, and it delighted me in ways that Tile and other trackers simply hadn't. It's colorful and looks more like a sporty keychain than random technobob. It sports a replaceable watch battery. It has an auto-loss feature to alert you when you're accidentally leaving one of your items behind — and Quiet Zones to keep that feature from being annoying within your own house. And perhaps my favorite bit: if you've lost your iPhone but not your Chipolo, you can shake it and your iPhone will trill in return.

I've been testing a Chipolo on my bag and keys for a few weeks, and I absolutely love it, though there are a few minor kinks in the system that could be better. The thing is dead-simple to pair after downloading the companion app on iOS, Android, or Windows Phone; just drop it atop your smartphone screen and let it get to work.

After it's paired, your app displays the name of your Chipolo, a button for making it ring, its current range, temperature sensor, and whether or not you're in a Quiet Zone. The temperature sensor is one of those little extras on the Chipolo that make me smile: It's certainly not the most accurate temperature gauge you'll find on a gadget — not by a long shot — but it absolutely helps when figuring out if you left an item indoors or outdoors.

In the weeks I've had the Chipolo, it never failed to ring when I tapped the button, though depending on the range between the two items, it may take a few seconds for the Bluetooth command to execute. Likewise, a hard shake of the Chipolo rings my phone almost instantly. (I appreciate that it requires a decent amount of force exerted to ping the phone, as the feature could otherwise quickly become annoying on something like a set of keys.)

If there's one complaint to be made, it's that the 180-foot range sensor on the Chipolo doesn't always function like it should. If my keys and iPhone are on the bed, it shows full range; if my keys end up under the covers, that range signal decreases by two bubbles. In day-to-day use this wouldn't normally be a problem — save for the auto-loss feature: If you lose contact with the Chipolo completely, it starts to chirp. This happened to me a few times during my testing period until I installed a geofenced Quiet Zone over my apartment, which solved the problem; nevertheless, it's a disappointing quirk to an otherwise fantastic product.

If your Chipolo senses it's lost, either by carelessness or quirk, it goes into Lost mode, providing you with a GPS snapshot of where the device was when your phone last had contact with it. Not as good as real GPS, but a nice place to start looking. You can also enable SOS mode, which lets anyone else with the Chipolo app installed pick up on its signal and give you a GPS update for easier searching. Once your phone's within range, the Chipolo app automatically displays a "Chipolo connected" screen.

A worthy little gadget

Even with the auto-loss software bugs, I love being able to quickly find my keys or my phone around the house, and I'm tempted to get a few more Chipolos for other important things I don't want to lose — my bookbag, for one.

What about you folks? Do you have a Chipolo or other GPS locator device you adore, or do you prefer to find things the old-fashioned way? Let me know in the comments below.

• Chipolo - $29 - Buy Now

By default, OS X Yosemite's Mail app won't "load remote content" such as the types of images typically requested by marketing emails and spam. You can change that in preferences if you really want to see remote images in your emails — such as the products being advertised by Apple, Best Buy, or other retailers in their mailings — but if you accidentally or deliberately click on spam, those images will load too. Even with "load remote content" left off, however, if any such marketing or spam email shows up as a Spotlight search result, Heisse reports that such remote content will load. So, what's going on and what can you do about it? ITWorld translates:

When you visit a website, that website gets information about you. That includes your Internet Protocol (IP) address, the type and version of computer operating system and browser you're using, and other technical details. Your IP address can be used to determine your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and the general area where you're located. If you've ever used something like Google Analytics — which most sites, including iMore, use benignly to figure out how many readers come here, from where, and what they're reading the most — then that's the type of information that can be collected.

As described above, email can be turned into a pseudo webpage by requesting server-side images — including tracking pixels — be loaded into them. Instead of attaching an image, which embeds the image in the email, they pull it from a website: http://example.com/image.gif. If "load remote content" is enabled, that image will be pulled as soon as you open the email, and the website will get your IP address and other information just as if you visited the site directly.

The issue here is that even if you have "load remote images" turned off in Mail, Spotlight will still load them. So, if a search you type into Spotlight returns a marketing or spam email message as the Top Hit, it will automatically load those images, and if it returns it as a Mail & Messages hit, and then you click on it, it will load those images.

I typically leave "load remote content" on, so I'm not overly concerned about this. I find it annoying to have to click on the "Load Remote Content" button every time I want to see an Apple or B&H or other product email I've subscribed to. A combination of Gmail, iCloud, and Mail.app anti-spam means I almost never see spam anyway, and I don't click on them when I do. I also delete my spam messages frequently. So, I've also never, in all the years Spotlight search has been available, had a spam mail message return as the first, automatically previewed, result.

My guess is most people are similar, and won't run into this problem either. That said, it is a problem, and some people are really and rightly concerned about online tracking, especially those being stalked. It would absolutely behoove everyone if Spotlight, when providing Mail results, honored the "load remote content" setting in Mail.

Hopefully Apple will implement that as soon as possible. In the meantime, if tracking pixels are a concern, you can disable Mail as a result type in Spotlight. It's less convenient, but that's typically the price we pay for security.

Although Apple has almost certainly been notified about this issue, I've also filed a bug report with Radar, should anyone with access want to dupe it.

Bug report: rdar://19439666

A story made the rounds earlier today calling into question the new Spotlight Suggestions feature in OS X Yosemite and iOS 8. In an effort to garner attention, it reports the collection and usage of the information required to enable this feature in a needlessly scary way. As any long time reader knows, security and privacy are always at odds with convenience, yet features like Spotlight Suggestions — and Siri before it — do an excellent job balancing as much convenience as possible with maintaining as much privacy and security as possible. Here's Apple's statement on the matter:

Here's the original charge:

The "backlash" cited by the sensationalistic story is not the result of the story but the result of sensationalism, and that's disappointing. We depend on major publications to provide us with accurate information for our benefit, not for their own benefit. Where they could have taken the time to look into it, assess the facts, and help people understand, they chose to double down on FUD, and that's not only disappointing, it's distressing.

So what are the facts? Apple discloses how Spotlight Suggestions work in both the Spotlight section of System Preferences on the Mac, and in the Spotlight section of Settings > General on iPhones and iPads.

There's also a Spotlight Suggestion check box on both so that you, the person using the device, can easily turn it off if you value privacy and security over convenience. (And if you are such a person, and have already disabled location services, Spotlight honors that setting and doesn't send the information.)

Apple links to the following text right from the prefs/settings pane on both OS X and iOS. Not only is it simple to find, it's plainly written and understandable:

Apple has also posted a privacy section on their website, and an updated version of their iOS 8 security document that reiterate what they're doing and their long-standing position on privacy. Here's the relevant parts:

The white paper goes on to explain how locations are blurred, anonymous IDs are only kept for 15 minutes, recent apps are only included if they're on a white list of popular apps, etc. (It starts on page 40 of the above-linked PDF if you're curious about the specifics.)

So, again, Apple is only doing what they need to do to provide the conveniences of the feature they announced — the same way they've needed to collect enough data to answer questions with Siri in the past, or show you locations on Maps, or find your iPhone, iPad or Mac, and the list goes on.

If you don't like or want it, you can turn it off. That's the real story here — education. How it works, and what you can do with it and about it.

If you have any concerns or questions about Spotlight Suggestions, let me know in the comments!

Spotlight is the name of Apple's system-wide search feature on both the Mac and iOS. With iOS 8, Spotlight is getting some new smarts, including location and context awareness, so it can help you find not only what you're looking for on your iPhone or iPad, but on the web as well. But how does the new Spotlight work?

Lighting the spots

Originally codenamed Matador, Spotlight was first announced for the Mac alongside OS X Tiger in 2004. It came to the iPhone as part of iOS 3 (iPhone OS 3) in 2009. It was the year after the introduction of the App Store but even in that short amount of time the number of apps people had on their phones had grown to the point where finding them wasn't always easy. So, in addition to the Home screen icons as app launcher they'd introduced with the first iPhone, they added a new screen to the left, accessible with a swipe, that you could use to type in app names and launch them that way. Spotlight could also be used to search for contacts, songs, email messages, and calendar events.

In iOS 7, Spotlight moved from a separate Home screen to every Home screen. Instead of swiping sideways to go to it, you swiped down to bring it to you. With it, you could search for apps, contacts, music, notes, events, mail, reminders, messages, and options to push the search out to the Web and Wikipedia.

By search standards it was simple — have index will populate results. The new one in iOS 8, well, the new one does more.

Searching smarter

With iOS 8, Apple is bringing context and location awareness to Spotlight. That can manifest in different ways. For example, if you type in the name of landmark, like Point Reyes, you'll be given the option to immediately open it in both Wikipedia and Maps. That includes local restaurants and movie showings.

You can also get recent news and sports results, and the most relevant website.

And, of course can also still search for music, videos, iBooks, and apps on your iPhone or iPad. However, Spotlight will not only give you results based on what's already on your device, but now it'll show you what's available in the iTunes, iBooks, and App Store as well.

So, if you hear about a great new game or a hot new book, you don't have to launch a store and then search. You can swipe down, type in the name, and go straight to the app or title in the store.

Spotlight in Safari

iOS 8 also brings Spotlight to Safari. Now, when you start typing in the unified smart search field you not only get top hits and the standard results, you also get Spotlight-style options, including the most relevant Wikipedia page.

Bottom line

Just like iOS 7 made Spotlight come to us, iOS 8 makes web-based results come to us. That might not make it the text-based natural language Siri front-end I've been pining for, but the context and location awareness make it an important step in that direction.

More of iOS 8: Explained

• Handoff in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite: Explained
• Making and receiving phone calls on iOS 8 for iPad and OS X Yosemite: Explained
• Sending and receiving SMS/MMS on iOS 8 for iPad and OS X Yosemite: Explained
• AirDrop and Instant Hotspot in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite: Explained
• QuickType keyboard in iOS 8: Explained
• Interactive notifications in iOS 8: Explained
• SceneKit in iOS 8: Explained
• Metal in iOS 8: Explained
• Widgets in iOS 8: Explained
• Share extensions in iOS 8: Explained
• Action extensions in iOS 8: Explained
• Inter-app photo and video editing in iOS 8: Explained
• Custom keyboards in iOS 8: Explained
• Family Sharing on iOS 8: Explained
• iCloud Drive and Document Picker for iOS 8: Explained
• Document provider extensions in iOS 8: Explained
• TestFlight in iOS 8: Explained
• Apple Maps in iOS 8: Explained
• iMessage in iOS 8: Explained
• Photos in iOS 8: Explained
• Spotlight in iOS 8: Explained
• Health in iOS 8: Explained
• Touch ID in iOS 8: Explained
• HomeKit in iOS 8: Explained
• Adaptive UI in iOS 8: Explained
• Manual camera controls in iOS 8: Explained

Spotlight is getting a major overhaul in OS X Yosemite. Not only does it look different but it acts differently too. It's no longer a passive search tool that just looks at file names and the content of files, then shunts you off to other apps if you need more help. Spotlight in Yosemite has been utterly reworked to be a very powerful information-finding tool that helps you get the data you need and act on it. So, how does it work?

Center screen

Spotlight's greater prominence as a search tool earns it greater prominence on the Yosemite screen. Clicking on the Spotlight icon in the menu bar, or hitting CMD + Space, yields a search bar in the middle of the screen, instead of a pop-down field that hangs from the menu bar in Mavericks.

A larger type face makes it easier to enter search terms, and a new search window shows you scrollable previews of your search results.

Expanded (and intermediated) search

In Mavericks, Spotlight pushes you to your web browser to search the web and Wikipedia. In Yosemite, Spotlight integrates those results directly into its summary window, saving you a step. Wikipedia entries are shown as a summary with a thumbnail image; if you want more details, an embedded link will open the page in your browser when you click on it.

Spotlight also links to Apple's Maps data. Entering an address will yield an embedded map with options for directions and other information. Apple also noted integration with Microsoft's Bing search engine, but that functionality appears missing in the first developer preview release that Apple offered at WWDC.

Interested in a movie that's now playing in theaters? Type in the name of the movie and you'll see a summary with a movie poster, links to trailers and even links to showtimes near you.

You can also ask Spotlight to do calculations and conversions. It's not quite as complete in the WWDC build as the actual Calculator application, but you can enter simple arithmetic or measurement units and Spotlight will yield results on the fly.

Yosemite Spotlight vs. LaunchBar, QuickSilver, and Alfred

Third-party developers have certainly filled in Spotlight's gaps over the years, and when Apple showed off the new features of Spotlight, some users of Running With Crayons' Alfred noticed some similarities right away, such as quick Web searches, map searches and more. In the same token, Objective Development's LaunchBar and Stranded Design's Quicksilver both help Mac users find content quickly and easily with just a few keystrokes.

When Apple introduced its third iteration of the Sherlock search tool — Spotlight's distant predecessor — it focused on web search instead of local search, as previous versions had done. Apple was accused of copying the concept wholesale from Karelia Software's Watson, which offered similar functionality. Ever since then, the term "Sherlocking" has existed to describe what happens when Apple incorporates a feature into OS X that had previously been supported by an independent developer.

In truth, Apple hasn't "Sherlocked" any of these apps with the new Spotlight. Each of them has features and functionality unique to themselves, and it'll be up to the individual developers to continue to differentiate their products to appeal to customers.

Bottom line

Apple has evolved Spotlight from a simple file search tool to something much more robust — a general search tool. It's doing the work of several applications you already depend on, like your web browser, the Maps application and others. But Spotlight isn't replacing them. Instead, it's layering on top of them, providing you with a front-line interface to get at the information you need to get things done.

Looking forward to getting your hands on Yosemite? Does Spotlight look like something you'll use regularly? What do you think of the changes? Sound off in the comments..

Imagine if, in iOS 8 or some future version of Apple's mobile operating system, Spotlight became a secondary, text-based point of access to Siri, able to parse the same type of natural language queries and commands, and retrieve the same kinds of responses, and perform the same kinds of actions? Back in June of 2012 I hoped for a Spotlight that could access Siri, and I'm still hoping for it today. Why?

Siri voice free

While Apple has made great progress expanding Siri since its debut in iOS 5, including adding new data sources for movies, sports, and more, they've also expanded Siri's accessibility. Siri gained Eyes Free in iOS 6 and CarPlay in iOS 7. However, there's no equivalent for "voice free".

No matter how useful and enabling Siri is, there will be times when it's simply not possible or socially acceptable to talk out loud to our phones. In those situations, being able to type "Cupertino weather?" or even "Text Georgia I'll be late" would be incredibly useful.

Sure, you can pull down Spotlight from any Home screen, search for the Weather or Messages app, enter the right city or add the right contact, type in your message, etc. but Siri has shown natural language can be faster using voice. Apps like Fantastical have shown they can be faster using text input as well.

What makes this feature so tantalizing is that Siri can already handle text input. Once you've made a voice query or command, an "edit" button appears. Type in anything you like, tap "Done" and Siri will process it. However, you have to start it with voice, which limits the utility.

Imagine instead if you could simply pull down Spotlight from the Home screen, enter your text, and access Siri directly. As I said last time, multiple points of entry into the Siri system don't increase complexity, they increase accessibility.

Quick access to quick actions

Siri can not only answer questions but execute commands. If Spotlight could parse text and hook into the system like Siri, it could also be used to execute simple commands.

There's lots of precedent for this. Quicksilver, LaunchBar, and Alfred are all implementations of text-based quick action launches that have existed on the Mac for years. Just Type from webOS and Type and Go from BlackBerry have tried the same on mobile. Launch Center Pro has even made an icon-driven version work as far as current iOS limitations will allow.

With Spotlight hooked up to Siri's action engine, "Text Georgia I'm running late" is just one example of the type of text-based quick-action that could be possible. "Tweet Guy Wow, arrow was bananas!" could instantly send your status. "Meeting with Ally at 6pm tomorrow" could add an event to your calendar.

If Apple gets around to adding a DocumentPicker to iOS, Spotlight could even see into any and all the files you're storing locally and on iCloud. Spotlight on the Mac can already be used to search for OS X files. "Team roster" or "WWDC keynote" would be just as useful on iOS.

I firmly believe iOS should stay as simple as possible for as many users as possible. When power can be added below the surface, however, when functionality can enabled only for those who want and need it, then it's too everyone's advantage. Just like Notification Center, Control Center, and fast app switching stay completely out of the way and all but invisible unless expressly called out, so too could Spotlight quick actions.

A smarter Spotlight

There's a lot I'd like to see from Spotlight and Apple's text based search in general, including and especially how it works on the stores. Nearest-neighbor and automatic search widening so that spelling mistakes become irrelevant and queries too narrow to return exact results can return close-enough results anyway.

Server side delays, the kind that have sometimes been problematic for the current Siri implementation, could also be mitigated. Since text is already been typed, there's no need to run speech-to-text. Any local actions could be processed locally. Any queries that require a trip to the internet to get results would suffer not much more than the same possible limitations Spotlight web and Wikipedia searches already have today.

Put all that together and Spotlight, like Siri, becomes a parallel, powerful, useful way to interact with the iPhone and iPad.

It makes Spotlight smart, and who doesn't want that?

Image from Engadget Mobile

A lot of people have been poring over screenshots from the iPhone Software Roadmap event -- our own Chad Garrett saw evidence that there might be Task/ToDo functionality built into iCal. The other shot that's been making the rounds is the one above, where you can clearly see a magnifying glass at the top of the "scrolling strip" in the contacts app. The current speculation is that it will finally allow us to "Type to find" a contact rather than have to scroll through the list. That's what I want, but Pocketnow has just posted up an editorial with this little tidbit:

AHA! We know that Apple already told us we'd be able to search through an Exchange server's Global Address list, and I wondered how exactly it would work. On Windows Mobile a search just automatically scans through both your local and the Exchange list -- with luck it will do the same on the iPhone. It's possible, though, that all we'll get is a separate search of Exchange with that icon. Windows Mobile uses very similar databases as Exchange so a common search is likely much easier to implement than it would be on the iPhone.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that search icon might not give us the contact search functionality we've been jonesing for.