What is Proactive search?

iOS, which is the software that runs in all the iPhones that are manufactured by Apple, is updated every year along with a new version of the iPhone. This year, iOS 9 brought with it a lot of great features that help make the smartphone experience even better.

One of these features is called the iOS9’s Proactive Search. It is a tool that is developed to enhance your search results by suggesting you apps, recent contacts, etc. based on your actions. This tool is powered by the very famous Siri and is a fairly powerful tool that can help save time by providing you with shortcuts that you might need.

How does it work?

This is also known as the spotlight search. The way it works is that when you swipe down on the home screen, you are presented with a search bar and four app suggestions. This search bar can be used to search anything within your iPhone or anything on the internet. The four app suggestions are based on what you like to use the most, Siri records and analyzes the apps you use the most and suggests shortcuts based on that analysis.

Now it doesn’t end here, when you swipe right on the home screen a whole new window opens up which consists of a number of different types of suggestions, suggested by Siri. After swiping right, the first thing you see in the proactive search menu is the search bar that is the same as the other one. Under the search bar there are four contacts suggested, these are either your favorite contacts or your most recent ones.

Below that there are four app suggestions that are used most often, this provides as a shortcut as you can just tap on the app icon, and it will lead you directly to it. Following the app suggestions, there is another tab that is called “Nearby.” This includes locations around you that you might be interested in visiting, such as coffee shops, clothing stores and what not. Again, this is also based on your actions and your search queries.

How to customize it?

The proactive search is a highly customizable tool and can be tailored according to your needs and likings. The first option that we will talk about which customizes this search tool is the “Siri suggestions”. This completely changes the search tool and removes all the suggestions leaving only the search bar.

Moving on, there are countless other ways in which you can customize it. There is an entire list of toggles that you can turn off and on and it will alter the spotlight search on the left of the home screen. From this list, some of the changes you can make are, turning off the stocks option, app store option or the various toggles for all the other third party apps involved.

Now let’s talk about some of the major changes you can make through turning off or on, the first party apps that are pre-installed by Apple. By turning off the contacts option you will no longer be able to see the recent contacts suggested by Siri which serves as an option to call or text your favorite contacts. If you turn of the spotlight suggestions, the suggested news articles in the spotlight search will no longer be visible. Lastly, the maps option, when turned off removes the nearby tab from the proactive search.

This is how you can use and customize the proactive search tool by Apple, according to your own requirements. Being a fairly new feature which people are still learning to use, this may see a lot of new options in the future.