Siri Analyzes How You Use Your Devices and Apps to Provide Personalized Suggestions and Better Search Results Using Local, On-Device Processing, and Syncs Across Your Devices with End-to-End Encryption Using iCloud

Siri uses local, on-device processing to learn how you use your devices and apps in order to personalize your experience. Using information stored on your device, such as your Safari browsing history, emails, messages, images, notifications, and contacts, as well as information donated or contributed by other installed apps, Siri can suggest shortcuts and provide suggestions in searches, share sheet, calendar, Look Up, Visual Look Up, Safari, apps, and more. For example, Siri may use on-device intelligence to suggest who to share a photo with in share sheet based on who is in the photo. Suggestions may be used to personalize Apple services but are not stored on Apple servers or shared with other third-party apps. When you run a Siri-suggested shortcut, you are subject to the app’s terms and conditions and privacy policy.

Siri uses iCloud to sync personalization across your Apple devices using end-to-end encryption.

To Make Suggestions and Search Results More Relevant, Some Information Is Sent to Apple and Not Associated with You

When you use Siri Suggestions, Look Up, Visual Look Up, when you type in Search, Safari search, #images search in Messages, or when you invoke Spotlight, limited information will be sent to Apple to provide up-to-date suggestions. Any information sent to Apple does not identify you, and is associated with a 15-minute random, rotating device-generated identifier. This information may include location, topics of interest (for example, cooking or basketball), your search queries, including visual search queries, contextual information related to your search queries, suggestions you have selected, apps you use, and related device usage data to Apple. This information does not include search results that show files or content on your device. If you subscribe to music or video subscription services, the names of these services and the type of subscription may be sent to Apple. Your account name, number, and password will not be sent to Apple.

This information is used to process your request and provide more relevant suggestions and search results, and is not linked to your Apple ID, email address, or other data Apple may have from your use of other Apple services.

Aggregated information may be used to improve other Apple products and services. Common search queries may be shared with a web search engine to improve search results.

Search Engine Suggestions in Safari

Safari has a single field for searches and web addresses so you can browse the web from one convenient place. When Search Engine Suggestions are enabled, Safari will ask your selected search engine for suggestions based on what you’ve typed.

Preload Top Hit in Safari

With Preload Top Hit enabled, as soon as Safari determines a Top Hit based on your bookmarks and browsing history, Safari will begin loading the webpage in the background. If you disable this option, the page will load normally.

You Have Choice and Control

If you do not want web-based content and search results, you can disable “Show in Look Up” and “Show in Spotlight” by going to Settings > Siri & Search and tapping to turn off those features.

If you do not want Siri Suggestions in apps, or when sharing, searching, or listening, you can disable Siri Suggestions by going to to Settings > Siri & Search and tapping to turn off “Show in App Library”, “Show in Spotlight”, “Show When Sharing”, or “Show When Listening”.

You can see and control the full list of features that Siri personalizes and apps that Siri suggests shortcuts for in Settings > Siri & Search. To stop apps from contributing information to personalize Siri, go to Settings > Siri & Search and tap the app name, then tap to turn off Learn from this App. To stop app clips from contributing information to personalize Siri, go to Settings > Siri & Search > App Clips and tap to turn off Learn from App Clips.

You can disable Location Services for Siri Suggestions in Search by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services and tapping to turn off Suggestions & Search. If you turn off Location Services on your device, your location will not be sent to Apple. To deliver relevant suggestions, Apple may use the IP address of your internet connection to approximate your location by matching it to a geographic region.

If you do not want Siri personalization to sync across your devices, you can disable Siri by going to Settings > [your name] > iCloud and tapping to turn off Siri in the list of apps using iCloud.

Apple may process and store the information that is sent to Apple with trusted third-party service providers.

By using Siri Suggestions in Search, you agree and consent to Apple’s and its subsidiaries’ and agents’ transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of this information. At all times, information collected by Apple will be treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, which can be found at www.apple.com/privacy

Published Date: September 18, 2023