This tweak displays Siri suggestions in all iOS Spotlight interfaces

nearbynews adds siri suggestions to all spotlight interfaces in iOS

Starting in iOS 9, Apple introduced Siri Suggestions in the updated Spotlight interface, which is accessed to the left of the first Home screen page.

Interestingly, despite the new Spotlight interface, Apple kept the original Spotlight interface that you can access by pulling down from the top of the screen, and as you might imagine, it doesn’t have all the new bells and whistles the new Spotlight interface does.

A new jailbreak tweak called NearbyNews is now available in Cydia’s BigBoss repository for $0.99 that will let you bring these features to the original Spotlight interface in iOS 9.

What are Siri Suggestions?

Siri Suggestions are the parts of the new Spotlight interface, just under the search bar, that show you suggested contacts, suggested apps, shortcuts to nearby places, and even trending news topics.

You can tap on any of the items shown to interact with them – tapping on a contact lets you call or message the contact, tapping on an app launches the app, tapping on a nearby shortcut shows you anything related to the shortcut close to you, and tapping on any trending news topics lets you read all about it.

How to add Siri Suggestions to the original Spotlight

Just like the Spotlight interface that you can access by swiping to the left of the first Home screen page, there’s another Spotlight interface you can launch by swiping down from the top half of the Home screen, just like you’ve always been able to do. But this interface lacks any Siri suggestions and only shows you the search bar.

After installing NearbyNews, you’ll get all of the same Siri Suggestions, Nearby suggestions, and News suggestions that you have in the new iOS 9 Spotlight interface in the older pull-down Spotlight interface.

nearbynews original and new

Left-of-Home-screen Spotlight (left) and pull-down-Home-screen Spotlight (right)

As a result of the new features being added to the pull-down Spotlight interface, you can no longer tap anywhere to dismiss Spotlight, because doing so would be interacting with something in the interface, so you have to tap on the “Cancel” button at the top right of the screen, or press the Home button to close Spotlight now that the tweak is installed.

My thoughts on NearbyNews

The idea of making the Spotlight experience uniform throughout iOS isn’t new – it’s an idea that’s crossed my mind since the start, and surely many others, but this tweak officially makes that thought a reality, so long as you have a jailbroken device.

NearbyNews will be helpful for anyone that uses Siri Suggestions, Nearby Suggestions, or News Suggestions regularly, and has the desire to use the original pull-down Spotlight interface instead of the newer left-of-Home-screen Spotlight interface that debuted in iOS 9.

One thing that I can say will be a deterrent right off the bat is that this tweak costs the user $0.99 to download, and for the price you’re paying for the tweak, it seems to lack any user configuration or major functionality that iOS doesn’t already offer (just in different places).

For anyone interested in learning about how the tweak works, the developer did a great thing and made the tweak open source on Github for beginner coders to learn inspiration.

Conclusion

If you want to add this functionality to the pull-down Spotlight interface, this is the jailbreak tweak you’ve been looking for; it’ll let you access all your Siri Suggestions, Nearby Suggestions, and News Suggestions that you’re used to seeing to the left of your Home screen from the basic pull-down Spotlight interface.

What are your thoughts on NearbyNews? Share in the comments below.