Fixing app search in iOS 11 [duplicate]

Since updating to iOS 11, search is unable to find my apps. Is this a new feature of iOS 11; a bug; or something that will eventually resolve itself over time?

I have so many apps that the only practical way to find them is to search for them, and in the past this has worked perfectly. E.g. simply typing "stack" (in fact just "st") suggests several apps including the one I'm looking for, 'Stack Exchange' listed right at the top of the screen.

Now however I get a very different result:

A bunch of useless search results at the top, and a suggestion from the app store for an app I'd never want. No sign of the frequently used app sitting right on my device.

What's going on here. Is there anything (short of restoring iOS 10) that I can do do address this?

Judging from the behavior I'm seeing I wonder if Apple hasn't changed the meaning of the Siri setting for apps from meaning "search in the app" to "search for the app": the only apps I see at all are ones where this setting is enabled. Is that perhaps what's happened (or does having this on just get those apps indexed first)?

Solution 1:

If you are unable to search for apps you could once find, check your settings to see what apps you prevented Search from searching within.

Apple recently changed the behavior of the relevant setting (Siri & Search). Prior to iOS 11 disabling this setting for an app prevented Search from showing results from "inside" the app (e.g. Dropbox listing files). With iOS 11 this behavior has changed: now this setting must be enabled for the app itself to appear in Search results at all.

Note that while this appeared to have been "fixed" in the betas of 11.2 with a new explicit option, "Show App" to search for the app, this seems to have been released (in 11.2.1) as "Suggestions in Look Up" which doesn't achieve the same result.

Solution 2:

Today I decided to give iOS 11.2 beta 4 a try. Though I hadn't read about this specific change, I was thrilled to see that Apple has addressed this issue! There is now a separate 'Show App' setting available on a per-app basis. It's still going to be tedious to go in to each of my 300-or-so apps to enable this, but I'm glad there's a way to again use Spotlight to launch apps.

My version of this question: Fixing app search in iOS 11

Solution 3:

Here is the solution; you need to manually turn on search results (“Search and Siri Suggestions”) for each individual app under Siri & Search settings. Once you do this it will work immediately, no need to index or plug your phone in - back to normal!

It was frustrating but when I went through the list I realized there were actually many apps that I was happy to exclude from search so that I can find the important apps even faster. Good luck!

Solution 4:

I don't think any of these solutions address the real problem. I'm having the same issue but I realized that you need to spell the exact name of the application you are looking for (Which is really annoying).

So in your case, you would have to search for "stack exchange". I hope Apple fixes this soon. They may have "Improved" functionality but they've broken simple app searches.