With around two million apps available to download from the App Store, Apple is facing a constant battle to improve discoverability. Its latest idea? Word suggestions.
In a tweet on the official App Store Twitter account, Apple announced the introduction of search suggestions when performing an app search. Typing in a search term such as “meditation” will pop-up the words game, timers, music, sleep, morning, and kids to help refine your search. You can see it in action in the video below:
Tapping any of those words reduces the app recommendations displayed, but further word suggestions also appear to help refine even further. For example, if you searched for “games,” further suggestions can whittle the options down to “puzzle” games, and then “jigsaw” games. And by taking this approach Apple is reducing the amount of typing required by replacing it with much quicker screen taps.
Apple has already rolled out the search suggestions feature to App Store users in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK, allowing millions of iOS users to take advantage. MacRumors spotted the search suggestions feature earlier this month as a few users gained access to it as part of the iOS 14.5 beta. They also point out Apple says 70% of App Store users rely on search to find apps, so this feature could have a big impact on discoverability and a positive sales impact for some developers.
