App intents versus core spotlight
Asked on 2025-07-12
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App Intents and Core Spotlight are both frameworks that enhance the discoverability and usability of app features on Apple platforms, but they serve different purposes and have distinct functionalities.
App Intents
- Purpose: App Intents is a framework that allows developers to define actions and content from their apps that can be used across various system features like Siri, Shortcuts, and Spotlight. It helps in making app functionalities more visible and accessible even when the app is not open.
- Functionality: With App Intents, you can create intents that represent actions your app can perform, such as opening a note or starting a workout. These intents can be used in Shortcuts, Spotlight, and other system features to provide a seamless user experience.
- Integration: App Intents can be used to create context-aware experiences, interactivity in widgets, and customized results in Spotlight. They allow for a unified approach to exposing app features across different system interfaces.
Core Spotlight
- Purpose: Core Spotlight is specifically focused on search functionality. It allows apps to donate searchable content to Spotlight, enabling users to find app content through natural language search terms.
- Functionality: Core Spotlight creates a private, local index of searchable content from your app, which can be queried through Spotlight. This framework supports semantic search, allowing for more flexible and powerful search experiences.
- Integration: Core Spotlight is used to enhance the search capabilities within an app by providing search results and suggestions based on user queries. It ensures that the searchable content remains private and local to the device.
Key Differences
- Scope: App Intents is broader, covering actions and content across multiple system features, while Core Spotlight is focused on search and indexing.
- Use Cases: App Intents is used for integrating app actions with system features like Siri and Shortcuts, whereas Core Spotlight is used for enhancing search capabilities within an app.
For more detailed information on how to develop for Shortcuts and Spotlight with App Intents, you can refer to the session Develop for Shortcuts and Spotlight with App Intents (11:40) which covers the integration of app actions with Spotlight on Mac.
Develop for Shortcuts and Spotlight with App Intents
Learn about how building App Intents that make actions available and work best with the new features in Shortcuts and Spotlight on Mac. We’ll show you how your actions combine in powerful ways with the new Apple Intelligence actions available in the Shortcuts app. We’ll deep-dive into how the new “Use Model” action works, and how it interacts with your app’s entities. And we’ll discuss how to use the App Intents APIs to make your actions available in Spotlight.
Get to know App Intents
Learn about the App Intents framework and its increasingly critical role within Apple’s developer platforms. We’ll take you through a ground-up introduction of the core concepts: intents, entities, queries, and much more. You’ll learn how these pieces fit together and let you integrate your app through Apple’s devices, from software features like Spotlight and Shortcuts to hardware features like the Action button. We’ll also walk through how App Intents is your app’s gateway to integrating with Apple Intelligence going forward.
Bring your app’s core features to users with App Intents
Learn the principles of the App Intents framework, like intents, entities, and queries, and how you can harness them to expose your app’s most important functionality right where people need it most. Find out how to build deep integration between your app and the many system features built on top of App Intents, including Siri, controls and widgets, Apple Pencil, Shortcuts, the Action button, and more. Get tips on how to build your App Intents integrations efficiently to create the best experiences in every surface while still sharing code and core functionality.