Describe the Semantic Index
Generated on 8/7/2024
1 search
The Semantic Index is a powerful feature introduced by Apple to enhance search capabilities within apps. It allows for more intuitive and meaningful search results by understanding the context and semantics of the search terms rather than relying on exact matches. Here are some key points about the Semantic Index:
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Core Spotlight Integration:
- Core Spotlight now supports query understanding with Semantic Search, allowing users to search for content in their own way with terms that are similar in meaning (Support semantic search with Core Spotlight).
- Semantic Search is enabled by default and can be configured to return ranked results using machine learning models (Support semantic search with Core Spotlight).
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App Intents and Indexed Entities:
- The new
IndexedEntityprotocol allows developers to index their app entities in Spotlight, making them searchable and actionable by Siri (What’s new in App Intents). - By associating app entities with searchable items, developers can leverage existing work on entities to help Siri find and take action on them (What’s new in App Intents).
- The new
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Apple Intelligence:
- Apple Intelligence uses the Semantic Index to organize personal information from across apps and understand the capabilities of apps to handle user requests (Platforms State of the Union).
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Siri Integration:
- Siri can now perform semantic searches, understanding the context of terms like "pets" to include related terms such as "cats" and "dogs" (Bring your app to Siri).
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Searchable Items:
- Developers can create
CSSearchableItemwith attributes that are processed in the Semantic Index, ensuring that text, images, and videos are searchable (Support semantic search with Core Spotlight).
- Developers can create
For more detailed information, you can refer to the sessions:
What’s new in App Intents
Learn about improvements and all-new features with App Intents, and discover how this framework can help you expose your app’s functionality to Siri, Spotlight, Shortcuts, and more. We’ll show you how to make your entities more meaningful to the platform with the Transferable API, File Representations, new IntentFile APIs, and Spotlight Indexing, opening up powerful functionality in Siri and the Shortcuts app. Empower your intents to take people deep into your app with URL Representable Entities. Explore new techniques to model your entities and intents with new APIs for error handling and union values.
Bring your app to Siri
Learn how to use App Intents to expose your app’s functionality to Siri. Understand which intents are already available for your use, and how to create custom intents to integrate actions from your app into the system. We’ll also cover what metadata to provide, making your entities searchable via Spotlight, annotating onscreen references, and much more.
Platforms State of the Union
Discover the newest advancements on Apple platforms.
Support semantic search with Core Spotlight
Learn how to provide semantic search results in your app using Core Spotlight. Understand how to make your app’s content available in the user’s private, on-device index so people can search for items using natural language. We’ll also share how to optimize your app’s performance by scheduling indexing activities. To get the most out of this session, we recommend first checking out Core Spotlight documentation on the Apple Developer website.