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How to search on iPhone

iPhones have evolved to help us with so many different tasks, but that also means keeping track of more information than ever. Whether its, work, personal, or shared content, follow along to become more efficient by improving how you search on iPhone.

There are several ways to leverage the power of search on iPhone. We’ll look at Spotlight (searching for local content like notes, documents, apps, the web, and more), searching the web, and even searching specific pages and documents for a keyword.

How to search on iPhone

Spotlight – Search for content on your iPhone, the App Store, Web, more

  1. From the Lock screen, swipe from left to right, use the search box at the top of your screen
  2. From your Home screen, you can also swipe from right to left to search with the Today View screen, or pull down on your Home screen (in between apps is usually best)
  3. Type in your search

Here’s how this looks:

Spotlight will surface what it thinks is the most relevant result first in the Top Hit section. Next you’ll see what may be content from your phone, as well as suggested websites and other results below.

Here’s how Spotlight looks if you activate it from the Home screen.

Keep in mind you can pull up content from emails, documents, music, apps, websites, and much more.

Safari – Search the web on iPhone

  1. Open Safari
  2. Tap Search or enter website name at the top of your screen
  3. Enter your web search
  4. Tap Go

Safari will auto suggest top results like News, popular searches and more. After your first search, you can tap the url/search bar at the top for another search, or choose to use the Google search box (or search box in your default browser).

To change your default search browser on iPhone, check out our tutorial here.

Search within a page on iPhone

  1. When you’re looking at a document, website or other compatible file or page, you can search for a specific word or term
  2. Tap the share button
  3. Slide over from right to left on the quick actions and tap on Find on Page as shown below
  4. Enter your search to scan the page for that result
  5. Tap Search

Matching results will be highlighted in yellow. Here’s how this process looks:

For more help getting the most out of your Apple devices, check out our how to guide as well as the following articles:


Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:

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