Ten days ago iOS 16 has been released and many users are complaining about Spotlight being very very slow. I was one of those users. I am running iOS 16 on an old iPhone X and Spotlight search is taking up to 10 seconds to return the results. Wait. What? Yes. 10 seconds.
Then I thought. What if it’s taking too long because AI is doing stuff before returning results.
And there it is. The solution.
Just go on your iPhone Settings and open Siri & Search. Then disable everything under BEFORE SEARCHING, CONTENT FROM APPLE and SUGGESTIONS FROM APPLE. This speeds up Spotlight search A LOT. Now search is instantaneous.
You are then free to try re-enabling one by one those options you disabled and test your iPhone to find a good compromise between functionalities and speed.
EDIT: I discovered another bug in iOS 16. Sometimes when swiping down from your home screen search does not work at all. To solve this issue just swipe right until you see your widgets then swipe down to search. Now it should work.
Hope these tips helps you to solve your issues with iOS Spotlight guys.
Have a nice day.
Giovanni