Apple’s App Store is inviting me to ‘search the way you talk’

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

I opened the App Store today to find an emulator I’d read about, and a new prompt appeared under the search bar inviting me to “search the way you talk.” I hadn’t seen the prompt before on my iPhone 13 Pro Max, and quite frankly, I had missed the iOS 18.1 update note about it.

As it describes, Apple’s update in October added, “App Store search lets you use natural language to find what you’re looking for more easily.” It’s also not the only place Apple is adding natural language search with iOS 18, in addition to Photos, Music, and Apple TV.

While some others had seen a splash screen in October, I’d only spotted the same simple search prompts as before. When I asked around at The Verge, several others hadn’t seen it before, although closing the app and relaunching it caused the message to appear in at least one case, and a few social media posts have popped up from other people noticing it for the first time.

The prompt in the hint bubble suggested trying something like “Apps that help me work out,” so of course, I gave it a try.

Screenshot showing the new App Store prompt.

How well does it work? When I searched “emulators that feature multiple consoles,” the top result was the multi-console Delta app. Cool. “Apps that only emulate single consoles” gave me the PS Remote Play, PlayStation, and Xbox apps — less good, but it did follow those with Gamma, a PS1 emulator app. And when I asked for “Video games that can help me work out,” well…

Screenshot of an App Store search result that includes a game called “Twerk Race 3D — Fun Run Game” — *This isn’t exactly what I was looking for, but I certainly would never have found this otherwise.*

Overall, it seems like an improvement to me. Twerk Race 3D is not an app that would help me work out, but it does seem like the search engine worked in spirit. I never felt like the App Store’s search was helpful for anything besides finding an app I already knew the name of. Plus, searching with the usual one-or-two-word terms might not give me the same variety as switching up how I phrase a natural language prompt.