This article explains how to disable and remove suggestions from your Siri virtual assistant on iOS devices and Mac. These directions apply to devices with iOS 12 or newer and Mac OS X 10.9 or newer.
How to Turn Off Siri Suggestions on iOS
If you aren’t interested in receiving suggestions from your virtual assistant, open the Settings app to turn off the suggestion feature.
Open the Settings app from your home screen.
Select Siri & Search.
Scroll down to Siri Suggestions section and use the toggle buttons to select where suggestions should appear: Suggestions in Search, Suggestions in Look Up, and Suggestions on Lock Screen.
Tap all three green buttons to completely turn off the Siri Suggestion feature.
Depending on the version of iOS, all three options may not be available.
How to Remove Siri App Suggestions on iOS
If you find Siri Suggestions useful, but would prefer that Siri didn’t recommend a specific app, individually choose apps to remove from the list of possible suggestions.
Open Settings.
Tap Siri & Search.
Scroll down and choose any app that you want to remove from Siri Suggestions.
Tap the Search, Suggestions & Shortcuts toggle switch to turn it off and make it white. If you don't see that option, use the toggle next to Siri & Suggestions.
How to Disable Siri Suggestions Widget
One last spot you might discover Siri attempting to provide recommendations is on your Today View screen. Follow these steps to access your Today View and hide the Siri Suggestions widget:
From your home screen, swipe right until you are presented with the Today View—a list of customizable widgets.
Scroll to the bottom and tap Edit.
Tap the red minus button next to Siri App Suggestions, then choose Remove.
If there's a green plus button next to the option, then Siri Suggestions is disabled.
Tap Done at the top to save the changes.
How to Remove Siri App Suggestions on Mac
Like with iOS, turning off Siri Suggestions in macOS is fairly straightforward:
From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
Select Siri from the list.
Choose Siri Suggestions & Privacy or About Siri & Privacy.
Choose which apps Siri can learn from to make suggestions, then select Done when finished.
How Do Siri Suggestions Work?
The Apple Siri Suggestion feature lets Siri recommend content from specific apps when you perform a search on your device, arrive at a distinct location, or attempt to launch apps during particular times of the day. This is accomplished by carefully analyzing how you use your device and then making appropriate suggestions.
While all analyzing is done locally on your device, and thus allows for greater privacy, you might find the feature bothersome and opt to turn it off or customize it for your own experience.
Matt KleinMatt Klein
Writer
Matt Klein has nearly two decades of technical writing experience. He’s covered Windows, Android, macOS, Microsoft Office, and everything in between. He’s even written a book, The How-To Geek Guide to Windows 8. Read more.
iOS 10 includes a feature that gives you quick shortcuts to apps it thinks you want to use—either based on your location or other factors. Here’s how to turn these suggestions off.
You have probably noticed these suggested apps when they appear on the lock screen in the bottom-left corner. For example, every time I go to the park where I play Pokémon Go, my iPhone suggests the Pokémon Go app. If you wake up in the morning and always check your Gmail, the Gmail app icon will appear when you start your day.
If you swipe up on the lock screen icon, the app will open.
Not only do suggested apps show up on the lock screen, but the app switcher as well, with an explanation as to why it’s recommended (“based on your current location,” for example). If you tap on the icon, the app will open.
NOTE: These icons look very similar to Handoff, which lets you pick up where you left off on your iOS device or Mac. For example, if you’re typing a long e-mail on your Mac and you need to step out for lunch, you can continue where you left off by swiping up on the Mail icon on your lock screen. These icons look the same, but they are different features and controlled by different settings on your phone.
It turns out Siri is to blame for these suggested apps—namely, the Siri App Suggestions widget.
In addition to suggesting apps on the lock screen and the app switcher, Siri also suggests them in the notification center. These three types of suggestions—lock screen, app switcher, and the widget—are inextricably linked. (Note, though, that the widget in question is not related to Siri Suggestions found in Spotlight searches.)
If you don’t want these app suggestions to appear, you can only disable them by removing the widget entirely.
First, swipe right on your home screen to access the widgets screen.
Scroll to the bottom of the widgets and tap “Edit”.
On the Add Widgets panel, locate Siri App Suggestions and tap the red minus.
If app suggestions don’t immediately disappear, you may want to restart your iPhone.
To re-enable app suggestions, return to the Add Widgets panel, and tap the green plus sign next to Siri App Suggestions.
If the app suggestions don’t immediately reappear after adding the widget, you may need to restart your iPhone.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to disable one or the other of these features. If you actually like the Siri App Suggestions widget, but don’t want the lock screen suggestions, for example, you’re out of luck. You either have to have them both or not at all.
- › How to Add Images to Questions in Google Forms
- › How to Delete Your Photos on Facebook
- › Razer Thinks You Want a PC Gaming Headset That Vibrates
- › How to Get a Link to a Photo or Video on Instagram
- › The Fix for Slow AMD Processors on Windows 11 Is Here
Matt Klein
Matt Klein has nearly two decades of technical writing experience. He’s covered Windows, Android, macOS, Microsoft Office, and everything in between. He’s even written a book, The How-To Geek Guide to Windows 8.
Read Full Bio »
Starting in iOS 9, Apple introduced Siri Suggestions in the updated Spotlight interface, which is accessed to the left of the first Home screen page.
Interestingly, despite the new Spotlight interface, Apple kept the original Spotlight interface that you can access by pulling down from the top of the screen, and as you might imagine, it doesn’t have all the new bells and whistles the new Spotlight interface does.
A new jailbreak tweak called NearbyNews is now available in Cydia’s BigBoss repository for $0.99 that will let you bring these features to the original Spotlight interface in iOS 9.
What are Siri Suggestions?
Siri Suggestions are the parts of the new Spotlight interface, just under the search bar, that show you suggested contacts, suggested apps, shortcuts to nearby places, and even trending news topics.
You can tap on any of the items shown to interact with them – tapping on a contact lets you call or message the contact, tapping on an app launches the app, tapping on a nearby shortcut shows you anything related to the shortcut close to you, and tapping on any trending news topics lets you read all about it.
How to add Siri Suggestions to the original Spotlight
Just like the Spotlight interface that you can access by swiping to the left of the first Home screen page, there’s another Spotlight interface you can launch by swiping down from the top half of the Home screen, just like you’ve always been able to do. But this interface lacks any Siri suggestions and only shows you the search bar.
After installing NearbyNews, you’ll get all of the same Siri Suggestions, Nearby suggestions, and News suggestions that you have in the new iOS 9 Spotlight interface in the older pull-down Spotlight interface.
Left-of-Home-screen Spotlight (left) and pull-down-Home-screen Spotlight (right)
As a result of the new features being added to the pull-down Spotlight interface, you can no longer tap anywhere to dismiss Spotlight, because doing so would be interacting with something in the interface, so you have to tap on the “Cancel” button at the top right of the screen, or press the Home button to close Spotlight now that the tweak is installed.
My thoughts on NearbyNews
The idea of making the Spotlight experience uniform throughout iOS isn’t new – it’s an idea that’s crossed my mind since the start, and surely many others, but this tweak officially makes that thought a reality, so long as you have a jailbroken device.
NearbyNews will be helpful for anyone that uses Siri Suggestions, Nearby Suggestions, or News Suggestions regularly, and has the desire to use the original pull-down Spotlight interface instead of the newer left-of-Home-screen Spotlight interface that debuted in iOS 9.
One thing that I can say will be a deterrent right off the bat is that this tweak costs the user $0.99 to download, and for the price you’re paying for the tweak, it seems to lack any user configuration or major functionality that iOS doesn’t already offer (just in different places).
For anyone interested in learning about how the tweak works, the developer did a great thing and made the tweak open source on Github for beginner coders to learn inspiration.
Conclusion
If you want to add this functionality to the pull-down Spotlight interface, this is the jailbreak tweak you’ve been looking for; it’ll let you access all your Siri Suggestions, Nearby Suggestions, and News Suggestions that you’re used to seeing to the left of your Home screen from the basic pull-down Spotlight interface.
Oliver HaslamOliver Haslam
Writer
Oliver Haslam is a professional freelance writer with nearly ten years of experience. His work has been published on Macworld, PCMag, 1Password’s blog, and other websites. He writes about all things Apple. Read more.
With iOS 12, Siri began offering suggestions for Shortcuts and more via the lock screen. You can disable these suggestions for individual apps or disable all Siri suggestions completely to clean up your lock screen.
Siri Suggestions is a little-known feature that lets Siri watch for tasks you carry out regularly and then offer up a shortcut to those tasks at the best time. A great example of this would be if you made a coffee order at a certain time or location. Siri would, theoretically, notice this and then start to recommend that action when the time is right. All you’d have to do is tap the notification to carry out the action.
Depending on the app in question, having Siri make suggestions that appear on the Lock screen might be something you’re looking for, but if it starts to get a little too chatty, or begins to make suggestions for apps that aren’t important, you might want to shut it off. Thankfully you can disable the feature for specific apps, rather than this being an all-or-nothing affair.
How to Disable Siri Suggestions For All Apps
If you’d prefer to prevent all apps from making Siri Suggestions on your Lock screen, you can flick one switch to make it happen.
To start, open Settings and tap on “Siri & Search.”
Scroll down and flick the toggle for “Suggestions on Lock Screen” to the off position.
How to Disable Siri Suggestions for Individual Apps
To get started, open the Settings app and tap “Notifications.”
Next, tap “Siri Suggestions.”
The next screen with display all of the apps that Siri Suggestions supports, with a handy toggle for deactivating the apps you don’t want to see.
To disable an app, switch the toggle to the off position.
If you later decide that you would like to see the suggestions once more, simply switch the same toggle back on.
- › How to Add Images to Questions in Google Forms
- › How to Delete Your Photos on Facebook
- › Razer Thinks You Want a PC Gaming Headset That Vibrates
- › How to Get a Link to a Photo or Video on Instagram
- › The Fix for Slow AMD Processors on Windows 11 Is Here
Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam is a professional freelance writer with nearly ten years of experience. His work has been published on Macworld, PCMag, 1Password’s blog, and other websites. He writes about all things Apple.
Read Full Bio »
AI assistants like Apple’s Siri are designed to “be in the right place at the right time” – in other words, predict what you want to do and make smart suggestions to streamline your day. In reality, that means Siri often makes suggestions in places like Search and the Lock Screen which you either appreciate or find distracting.
If you’re not a fan of Siri’s suggestions, you can easily turn them off on your iPhone, or just customize which apps can take advantage of Siri suggestions.
How to turn off Siri suggestions completely
1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Scroll down and tap “Siri & Search.”
3. In the “Siri Suggestions” section, turn off each of the Siri suggestion options you want to disable. Swipe the button to the right to disable suggestions while searching, on the Lock Screen, on the Home screen, or when sharing.
How to turn off Siri suggestions for certain apps
When Siri notes a trend – such as you always start a particular app around noon – the AI will start to suggest you run the app at that time. If you like getting some Siri suggestions but don’t want Siri to make suggestions about certain apps, you can fine-tune the way Siri works.
1. If you’re not already there, start the Settings app and tap “Siri & Search.”
2. Scroll down to the list of apps and tap the app you want to modify.
3. On the app’s details page, you can tweak how Siri interacts with this app.
To ensure you don’t miss out any important tasks, Siri offers suggestions on the lock screen. For instance, if you create notes every day in the evening, the personal assistant will alert you around the same time of the day. While it certainly is a very helpful feature, there is one downside to it. This feature may expose your privacy about the things you don’t want to share with others. If you are like me, you may want to turn off Siri Suggestions on the Lock screen.
I’m fine with Siri’s recommendations in search, apps, and keyboard as they enhance the user experience. But I would always want to keep them away from Lock Screen. After all, it’s never a wise idea to keep your personal information so accessible, isn’t it?
How to Disable Siri Suggestions on Lock Screen on iPhone or iPad
Step #1. Launch the Settings app → tap on Siri & Search.
Step #2. Next, turn off the switch next to Suggestions on Lock Screen.
That’s all folks! Going forward, the personal assistant will no longer offer suggestions on the lock screen.
If you ever decide to go back to the previous option, just follow the same steps mentioned above and turn on the switch in the end.
How to Enable/Disable Siri LockScreen Suggestions for Individual Apps
Don’t want to completely disable Siri LockScreen Suggestions? You can choose to turn it off on a per-app basis. For instance, if you want to continue to receive suggestions about the Podcasts app, you have the option to keep this feature enabled for this particular app.
Step #1. Open Settings app on iOS device → tap on Siri & Search.
Step #2. Next, scroll down and select the app from which you don’t want to receive suggestions on Lockscreen.
Step #3. Turn-ON/OFF the switch next to Allow on Lock Screen.
You can repeat the same steps to enable/disable this feature for individual apps.
That’s all there is to it!
Wrapping up
Faced with huge competition, Siri has to cover a lot of ground to fend off the challenge coming from the likes of Alexa and Google Assistant. With the integration of Shortcuts, Apple’s personal assistant has got a much-needed shot in the arm.
What’s the one improvement you would still like to see in it? Do let us know that down below in the comments.
You would like to explore:
iGeeksBlog has affiliate and sponsored partnerships. We may earn commissions on purchases made using our links. However, this doesn’t affect the recommendations our writers make. You can read more about our review and editorial process here.
Let’s be honest, Siri is not the smartest digital assistant compared to Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. Although Apple was first to introduce the concept of a voice helper in a smartphone, the company failed to keep up with competitors. Thus, users find Siri more irritating than helpful.
iPhone and iPad prompt users to enable Siri during the first setup. If a user decides to use Siri, they also get Siri suggestions. Those are different tips and suggestions across parts of the operating system, for example, on the lock screen, in Spotlight, during sharing, on the Home screen, etc. Siri tries to be helpful and provide users with relevant information. Still, more often than not, it fails to do so. If you, like many other people, find Siri Suggestions rather annoying than helpful, here is how you can turn off Siri Suggestions on your iPhone and iPad.
Turn Off Siri Suggestions
To disable Siri Suggestions on your iPhone, make sure you have turned on Siri first.
- Go to Settings and find the Siri and Search section. Tap it.
- Scroll down and find the Siri Suggestions section. That is where you disable Siri Suggestions in different parts of the operating system. Do note that you can disable Siri Suggestions partially, for example, only in Spotlight.
- Disable one, several, or all toggles in the Siri Suggestions section.
- Close the Settings app.
Alternatively, you can use search in the Settings app to quickly find the Siri Suggestions section. Open Settings and tap the search box above your profile. Select Suggestions in Search in the search results.
Finally, if you do not find Siri helpful, you can disable it altogether to get rid of Siri Suggestions. Go to Settings > Siri and Search and toggle off the following options: Listen for “Hey Siri”, “Press Home for Siri”, and “Allow Siri When Locked”.
Tip. If you do not like how much space Siri Suggestions take on the search screen, you can tap the little arrow button in the top-right corner. It will collapse the list of suggested apps.
It is easy to disable Siri Suggestions on iPhone or iPad, if you find them cluttering Spotlight Search and not being not particularly useful.
Turn OFF Siri Suggestions on iPhone
As you must have noticed, Siri provides suggestions when you perform a Spotlight Search, open Apps during certain periods of the day or when you arrive at a particular destination.
These suggestions are based on analysis of your daily routines and the way you have been using your device during different periods of the day and at different locations.
According to Apple, the information used to process your request and provide relevant Siri suggestions remains anonymous, as it is not linked to your Apple ID.
Also, Apple makes it easy to disable Siri Suggestions on Home Screen, Lock Screen, while Searching, while Sharing and you can also disable Siri activity in Apps and Widgets.
1. Completely Disable Siri Suggestions on iPhone
You can completely get rid of Siri Suggestions on iPhone by going to Settings > Siri & Search and disabling all Siri Suggestions on the next screen.
After this, you will no longer find Siri Suggestions appearing anywhere on your iPhone.
2. Turn OFF Siri Suggestions for Individual Apps
If you find Siri Suggestions useful for certain Apps (Say Maps or Photos), you can leave those Apps alone and Turn OFF Siri Suggestions for other Apps that you do not find useful.
Go to Settings > Siri & Search > scroll down and select the App for which you want to disable Siri activity.
On the next screen, you can disable Siri Suggestions by moving the toggle next to each Siri Suggestion type under “ON Home Screen” section to OFF position.
Note: You can disable Learn from this App option, if you do not want Siri to analyze the way you use this particular App on your iPhone.
If required, you can Turn OFF Siri Suggestions and Siri activity for other Apps on your iPhone or iPad by repeating the above steps.
3. Remove Siri Suggestions Widget
Even if you disable Siri Suggestions for Apps, you may still find Siri providing suggestions via its own Suggestions Widget on the Home Screen.
Swipe Right on the Screen of your iPhone > scroll down and tap on the Edit button. This will make the Widgets wiggle with a minus icon next to them.
To remove the Siri Suggestions Widget, simply tap on the minus icon next to the Widget.
On the conformation pop-up, tap on the Remove option to get rid of Siri Suggestions Widget.
The new Siri Suggestions widget for iOS 14 groups your frequently used apps together in one place on your iPhone Home Screen. At first, having your most-used apps in one place seems great. But if you’re trying to cut back on using social media or playing games on your iPhone, or don’t want everyone to know that you’ve downloaded Tinder, having those apps front and center becomes a problem. We’ve gone over how to add widgets, including the Siri Suggestions widget, to your Home Screen in a previous article. Now we’ll show you how to stop individual apps from being included in the Siri Suggestions widget. There are two ways to remove an app from the Siri Suggestions widget; using your iPhone Settings, or via the widget itself. Let’s get started.
How to Remove Apps from the Siri Suggestions Widget on the Home Screen
If you see an app in the Siri Suggestions widget that you’d like to remove, you can quickly and easily remove the app right there.
- Touch and hold the app you want to remove from the Siri Suggestions widget.
- A menu will pop up; tap the Don’t Suggest option.
- Confirm that you want to remove the app, and it will be removed from your Siri Suggestions widget and replaced with another app suggestion.
How to Remove Apps from the Siri Suggestions Widget via Settings
You can use Settings to remove apps that are currently showing up in the Siri Suggestions widget as well as to prevent apps not currently being suggested from showing up.
- Open the Settings app.
- Tap Siri & Search.
Check out our free Tip of the Day for more Apple device tutorials.
Topics
Author Details
Author Details
Leanne Hays
Leanne Hays is an SEO Content Strategist and Feature Writer at iPhone Life, and has written hundreds of in-depth how-to and troubleshooting articles. She’s a former Associate Editor for iPhone Life magazine, and has written for the Iowa Source , as well as web content for education marketing. Leanne has an associate’s degree in education, with a focus on curriculum development, as well as a bachelor’s degree in science. She has over nine years of experience with SEO, social media management, and web development and writing. Despite years of web work, Leanne is by no means an early adapter; she’s only owned a smartphone for five years, which makes her highly sympathetic to the learning curve of new iPhone owners. She enjoys making reader’s lives easier and putting her education experience to work by walking them through the most practical ways to use Apple devices, step-by-step.
In off-work hours, Leanne is a mother of two, homesteader, audiobook fanatic, musician, and learning enthusiast.
