Spotlight search is an often-forgotten feature that makes finding virtually anything on your iPhone an effortless task. Not only can it find apps, but it can find files, locations, messages, news, web pages, and more.
The one downside to Spotlight is that you need to be on the Home Screen to access it, and iOS developer alex_pngwanted to make Spotlight accessible from anywhere, hence a jailbreak tweak dubbed SpotlightPls.
With SpotlightPls, users may invoke Spotlight search from anywhere in iOS, including from within apps, via the help of a custom gesture of their choosing.
While this is already possible with the popular Activator add-on by Ryan Petrich, Activator doesn’t officially support iOS 14 like SpotlightPls does, and so we would recommend the latter in this particular instance.
Once installed, SpotlightPls adds a dedicated preference pane to the Settings app where you can choose your preferred gesture for activating Spotlight search throughout iOS and more:
The options provided in this preference pane include the following:
- Swipe right on the Status Bar to invoke Spotlight
- Swipe left on the Status Bar to invoke Spotlight
- Long press on the Status Bar to invoke Spotlight
- Swipe down on the Status Bar with two fingers to invoke Spotlight
- Shake your device to invoke Spotlight
- Enable or disable haptic feedback
The developer provides a Respring button at the top-right of the preference pane to save any changes you make here.
If Spotlight search is something you find extraordinarily useful, but you don’t like having to close the interface you’re already in to access it, then SpotlightPls might be worth checking out. The tweak is available for free from alex_png’s personal repository via your favorite packet manager app and supports all jailbroken iOS 13 and 14 devices.
If you’re not already taking full advantage of alex_png’s personal repository, then you can add it to your package manager app of choice by using the URL provided below:
https://alexpng.github.io
Do you have an inherent need to access Spotlight search from anywhere in iOS? Let us know in the comments section down below.