Spotlight: Global Search

Man, you will love this one.

The iPhone 3.0 software upgrade brings you a feature so fast, powerful, and useful, you'll wonder how the heck anyone survived without it: a global search feature called Spotlight. Just by typing a few letters, you can search almost the entire phone at once. Here's where it looks to find matches:

  • Contacts. First names, last names, and company names.

  • Mail. The To, From, and Subject lines of all accounts. (The iPhone doesn't try to search the text inside your email.)

  • Calendar. Appointment names, meeting invitees, and locations (but not any notes attached to your appointments).

  • iPod. Song, performer, and album names, plus the names of podcasts, videos, and audiobooks.

  • Notes. The actual text of your notes.

  • Your apps. For frequent downloaders, this may be the juiciest function of all: Spotlight also searches the names of every single app on your iPhone. If you have dozens or hundreds installed, this is a much more efficient way to find one than trying to page through all the Home screens, eyeballing the icons as you go.

Tip

It's worth noting that the Contacts, Mail, Calendar, iPod, and Notes programs have their own Search boxes (usually hidden until you scroll all the way to the top of their lists). Those individual Search functions are great when you're already in the program where you want to search. The Spotlight difference is that it searches all these apps at once.

How to Open Spotlight

The Spotlight screen is built into your Home screens ...

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