On my iPhone I sometimes use the Search field as a faster way to get to an app. Faster than going to the very last page and searching for it there for sure. Faster than finding the page and the stack its in too.
But turns out, for the Health app that just doesn’t work for me. ???
I get all kinds of garbage search results along with a contact and a lot of related system prefs, but no app. If I scroll down all the way I see one app listed (an older one related to EU Covid certificates, so indeed health related). Heck I even get App Store and map suggestions, but not the obvious thing I’m after. If I search in the App Library search field at the top, it comes up immediately so there’s no doubt the Health app is around and searchable. Other apps I can search for just fine and they always immediately show at the top under Top Hit as desired.
Anybody else’s search broken like this? Did Health use to have a different name under which I should be searching for it?
I had a similar experience with Podcasts.app, then eventually discovered that I had excluded it from searching in Settings > Siri & Search.
If this isn’t your situation, a workaround is to jump the App Library screen and search for Health from there. Based on my Podcasts experience, that always searches all apps.
Ha! Thank you. Sure enough. It was deactivated in there. I checked all others and this was the only one. I had never been in there – not even sure I was ever aware the option existed. Wonder what led to Health having being deactivated in there.
What’s interesting about this is that I just ran into something similar — the Mail app wouldn’t appear in search. I knew where it was so I just grumbled and went to find it. I had previously had this problem with Voice Memos, but either I resolved that or it fixed itself years ago.
But the fact is, I would NEVER have gone into Settings > Siri & Search and turned off the various switches here for Mail. And I’m really curious what others might be turned off. A spot check hasn’t found any yet, but it’s tedious to check apps.
I’ve long thought that it’s possible for settings bits to get flipped behind our backs on occasion. This is just another data point in favor of that.
Yes. Just yesterday, in the Health app, many new (to me) items were in the list (one of which was Wheezing; I don’t recall the others, but there were about eight of them). After hunting around for some sort of list of options, I found such a list. Sure enough, the items that had just appeared were turned on, and I promise you I didn’t do it.
I’m not going to argue against that, but I might have some more data. In the example I posted, I had excluded Podcasts from searching years ago to prevent podcast episodes from polluting my results. And I’m virtually certain that back then, there was only one exclusion option, not two.
So my theory is, whenever the second “exclude the app from searching” was introduced, my previous setting was carried over to include both the app and the content. Which doesn’t seem unreasonable, since the old setting did both.
Sure enough. It was deactivated in there. I checked all others and this was the only one. I had never been in there – not even sure I was ever aware the option existed. Wonder what led to Health having being deactivated in there.