In case you have used the Spotlight search on your iPhone or iPad, you may have noticed that it displays your search terms below the search bar but provides no way to clear those search terms. Although, Apple has not yet provided an option to clear spotlight search history, there is a workaround that can help you clear your spotlight search history on iPhone or iPad.
Spotlight Search on iPhone
The best feature of Spotlight search is that it allows you to search for things on the internet (like a web browser) and also allows you to search for things that reside on your iPhone (Contacts, Pictures, Songs, Apps etc).
You can easily access Spotlight Search on your iPhone by swiping down on the Home Screen and use it to quickly launch Apps and play your favourite songs by typing the name of the song in the search bar.
As you can imagine, bringing up a song by merely typing its name in the search bar is far easier and faster than going through the process of looking for the Music app, Launching the Music App and then finding the song by scrolling through the long list of songs on your iPhone.
There is no doubt that the spotlight search is a useful feature to have on your iPhone, especially for those users who have a large music collection and dozens of apps residing on their iPhone or iPad.
Clear Spotlight Search History On iPhone or iPad
As mentioned above, Spotlight Search can reveal your search history, as it clearly displays your search terms below the spotlight search bar.
While there is no official way to clear Spotlight Search History, there is an easy workaround that allows you to clear Spotlight Search history on iPhone or iPad.
1. From the Home screen of your iPhone or iPad, tap on Settings.
2. Next, tap on General.
3. On the General screen, scroll down and tap on Spotlight Search.
4. On the next screen, toggle the switch next to Siri Suggestions to OFF position (See image below).
5. Next, you can turn back Siri Suggestions to ON position again, so that you can continue using the Spotlight Search on your iPhone.
This simple act of Turning OFF Siri Suggestions clears your Spotlight Search history on iPhone and Turning back Siri Suggestions to ON position allows you to continue using Spotlight search with a clean slate.
Hopefully, the ability to clear spotlight search history will be added by Apple in one of the upcoming iOS updates. Until that happens you can make use of this workaround to clear Spotlight Search history on your iPhone or iPad, whenever you feel the need to do so.