How to stop an app’s data from showing in Spotlight Search on iPhone or iPad

iPhone Search, accessed by swiping down on the Home Screen or tapping the iOS 16 Home Screen Search button, even displays in-app content.

For example, if you type birthday, it will bring up your calendar birthday events, which is the data from inside the Calendar app. Similarly, entering a person’s name will show their contact card, which is the content from your Contacts app. The same is true for other Apple and third-party apps.

While this is helpful in most cases, you may not want iOS Search to show information from some apps for privacy or personal reasons. In this tutorial, we will share how to prevent an app’s content from appearing in iPhone or iPad Spotlight Search.

Stop app content from showing in iPhone Search

Stop an app’s data from appearing in search results

  1. Open Settings and tap Siri & Search.
  2. Scroll down and tap the app whose data you don’t want to see in iPhone Search. For example, we are trying to hide data from the Calendars app from showing in search.
  3. Turn off Show Content in Search.
Turn off Show Content in Search in iPhone Settings app to prevent in-app data from showing in iOS Spotlight Search

From now on, your iPhone won’t display anything from inside this app in Spotlight Search. For example, I disabled the in-content search for the Calendar app. So going forward, my calendar events won’t appear in Search.

In case you don’t see Show Content in Search, turn on Show App in Search, and it will appear below it.

Wondering what Show App in Search does? This enables you to choose whether to include an app in iPhone Search or not. So, for example, if you have an app that you want to hide on your iPhone, make sure you turn off Show App in Search for it. After this, if anyone takes your iPhone and searches for that application name in Spotlight, the app, along with its in-app data, won’t appear in the search results.

Useful Search tips: