Adding and Removing Locations from Spotlight Search on the iPhone 5

Smartphones that tie together your text messaging, emails, and other forms of communication have made it really simple to get in touch with other people.

Plus, in many cases, this communication is stored directly on your phone. But all of this information can get a little overwhelming sometimes, and you may not remember if an important piece of information was in a text message, an email, or if you wrote it down as a note.

This is where the Spotlight Search feature on your phone comes in handy. You can even configure it to search through a specific set of locations for your information, if you find that emails or text messages simply clog your search results.

Customizing Spotlight Search on the iPhone 5

The Spotlight Search feature is incredibly useful if you are constantly misplacing information on your device, or if you know where something is located, but it might take longer to find it manually than to simply have your phone look for it. Plus the ability to customize the locations on Spotlight Search will allow you to exclude information that is less than helpful, thereby making it much simpler to find exactly what you are looking for.

Step 1: Touch the Settings icon.

open the iphone 5 settings menu

Step 2: Select the General option.

open the general menu

Step 3: Touch the Spotlight Search option.

how to customize spotlight search on the iphone 5

Step 4: You can then touch each option to add or remove it from Spotlight Search. Options with a check mark will be included when you search and options without a check mark will not be included.

select what you want to include in spotlight search

You can swipe right from your first home screen to access Spotlight Search, which looks like the image below.

the spotlight search screen

Do you have a lot of shows and movies in iTunes that you wish you could watch on your TV? If you purchase an Apple TV, you can stream content directly from iTunes in the cloud to the Apple TV, allowing you to watch it on your television. It also has Netflix, Hulu Plus and other streaming services that you already use. Learn more about the Apple TV to see if it is the right device for you.

You can also learn how to search your email on your iPhone 5 from the Mail app.

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