How to Disable Siri Suggestions in Spotlight Search on iPhone

Jan 18, 2016 - 13 Comments

Siri Suggestions in Spotlight search of iOS

Siri Suggestions is a feature of modern versions of iOS that recommends contacts, apps, nearby locations, and news, right from the Spotlight search screen. Siri Suggestions aims to be intelligent and learn from user behavior on the iPhone and iPad, offering contacts and apps depending on usage patterns, location, and the time of day, and while this feature is appreciated by many iOS users, some don’t use it, and others may find it unnecessary, slow, or unhelpful.

If you’d like, you can turn off Siri Suggestions in the Spotlight search screen of iOS easily. Doing so still allows you to use Spotlight just as before in prior versions of iOS, including searching the local device, the web, and Wikipedia, it simply removes the suggested section from offering results before searching in Spotlight.

How to Turn Off Siri Suggestions in Spotlight Search of iOS

From the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch do the following:

  1. Open the Settings app on iOS and go to “General” and then to “Spotlight Search”
  2. Flip the switch for “Siri Suggestions” to the OFF position
  3. Disable Siri suggestions in Spotlight search for iOS

  4. Exit Settings and return to Spotlight search to find the feature disabled

Returning to Spotlight in iOS will no longer have the contacts, apps, nearby locations, and news data within the search page.

In the screenshots below, the left side shows Siri Suggestions enabled in Spotlight search, and the right side shows Spotlight in iOS with Siri Suggestions disabled:

Siri Suggestions in Spotlight search of iOS, shown on and off

If you use this feature often you likely won’t want to do this, but there is a potential advantage for disabling Siri Suggestions on some older devices in that it speeds up iOS 9 on some of those devices with less powerful hardware, whereas the latest iPhone and iPads likely won’t notice any difference in performance.

Of course, you can also enable or re-enable Siri Suggestions by simply returning to the same settings screen and flipping the switch to the ON position.

Siri Suggestions is available in iOS 9 and later versions, so if you’re running a prior version of iOS you won’t see the feature at all, and thus won’t have a toggle to enable or disable the service.

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Posted by: Paul Horowitz in iPad, iPhone, Tips & Tricks

13 Comments

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  1. Austin says:

    This is not the way to do it. You have to go to the suggestions search page scroll all the way down to the bottom and click edit and then hit the minus button thatis red and says quotations Sir is red and says Siri app suggestions

  2. Ashley says:

    This didn’t work for me, but I finally found a way to get rid of it on my phone. I just scrolled all the way down to the bottom of the page and clicked on the edit button. After that, it will bring you to a add/remove widget page and you should be able to remove it there.

  3. Dan says:

    This does not work anymore with the October 2016 update. You must do:
    General
    Restrictions
    Turn them on
    Scroll down select Siri
    Unclick everything under Siri

    Check on your swipe right screen should be gone

  4. Dan Dannen says:

    I don’t have a damn iPhone!, I have an Android,areally,reallyreally good one!! How do I get rid of the useless news headlines screen from my display???!

  5. Ronald says:

    Ok. So I found st the bottom of that screen is an edit button that allows you to decide what you want to show. I did “turn off” Siri app suggestions. Not sure if it is really “gone ” but at least it doesn’t show.

  6. Agnes says:

    Same thing as others! I followed directions to the letter and they still show up! So frustrating.

  7. Cliff says:

    Me too. I’ve followed the rules but it won’t go away.

  8. Ronald says:

    I followed the instructions above, but that screen just will Not go away. Is here something else I can try?

  9. Broadway says:

    I like Siri Suggestions in general (though I agree that it is misnamed), but I’d like to remove the News part, which shows me stuff I don’t care about. Any way to do that?

  10. Rafagon says:

    Funny thing is, if you ask Siri, “Who do you suggest I call?”, she has no idea about these suggestions. So they are not true Siri suggestions. Odd that with Apple’s attention to detail, they missed this.

  11. Grrrreat says:

    I do not like this ‘feature’, I don’t use it and it slows down my iPhone. Turning it off makes a noticeable improvement in speed on iPhone 6.

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