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Spotlight Suggestions expand to seven new countries, including India and Hong Kong

Spotlight Suggestions, a feature that recommends content from the Internet when searching with Spotlight on an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with iOS 9.0+ or a Mac running OS X 10.11 El Capitan or later, has expanded to seven additional markets: Hong Kong, India, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and United Arab Emirates.

Counting these regions, Spotlight Suggestions are now available in a total of 26 major markets around the world, listed on Apple's iOS Feature Availability webpage.

Tip: using emojis in iOS Spotlight Search

iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users can use emoji as search terms in Spotlight Search to some rather interesting effects. It's unclear when this feature was added or activated.

That being said, bringing up iOS's built-in Emoji keyboard to type an emoji in Spotlight's search field will produce matching results related to the character's meaning, as highlighted by Cult of Mac.

Introducing Assistant, Google’s conversational AI helper

In addition to announcing a pair of new iPhone apps for messaging and video calling and a preview of its Amazon Echo-killer, the Google I/O 2016 keynote saw some pretty exciting news regarding the search giant's all-new two-way conversational assistant, coming soon to all your devices.

Named Assistant, it's a big upgrade to Google Now that builds “on all our years of investment in deeply understanding users' questions”.

Tip: this secret Safari shortcut quickly loads your last search results

SnapBack, a long-standing and very easily overlooked Safari for Mac feature, can save you a ton of clicks if you search a lot, and most of us do. With SnapBack, you can go right back to the last full search results page, even after traveling multiple pages in from your search results.

Part of the reason most users aren't familiar with SnapBack has to do with Apple's decision to remove the little orange SnapBack icon from Safari's address bar and bury the feature  in the menus.

Here's that secret SnapBack shortcut that everyone should start using right now.

Google’s own Amazon Echo-like accessory, dubbed ‘Chirp’ is landing soon

Amazon Echo

Code-named 'Chirp', Google's upcoming hardware appliance will integrate the company's search and voice assistant technologies akin to the Amazon Echo, and is landing soon, Re/code reported yesterday.

The rumored device should resemble Google's OnHub wireless router, according to several sources.

If the increasing popularity of Amazon's integrated wireless speaker and voice command device is an indication—it's estimated they sold three million Echo units to date—Google's rumored accessory could prove popular with users, especially given Google's expertise in voice and search.

Universal search on Apple TV has gained support for finding CBS shows

Apple continues to add more content sources to the universal search capability of the fourth-generation Apple TV. Last week, for example, it added Starz content to the Apple TV's universal search.

And now, owners of the set-top box who installed CBS's tvOS application can take advantage of Siri to find such CBS shows as “Big Bang Theory”, “NCIS“, “Supergirl” and others, just by using their voice. Apple's support document was updated yesterday to reflect the addition of CBS to the universal search lineup for the fourth-generation Apple TV.

Google optimizes the layout of Now cards in native search app for iPad

Google on Monday pushed a small refresh to its native Search app for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad in the App Store. Bumped to version 14.0, the software features an optimized layout of the Now cards to make better use of the iPad's screen real estate.

“Updated structure for Now cards on iPad, designed to keep your content organized and better surface the info you need most,” reads a line from Google's release notes accompanying the 65.4-megabyte download.

Explore the world of Wikipedia in revamped iOS app with 3D Touch, Explore feed and more

Wikipedia, the world's encyclopedia and knowledge base, has never had an attractive mobile app. That changes today with a major refresh to its app in the App Store permitting users to explore Wikipedia content tailored to their interests via an all-new Explore feed.

Navigations has been greatly simplified with new touch-friendly ways to discover content, 3D Touch support, Spotlight Search integration and more.

The app was obviously designed with the theme of exploration in mind.

“We all know Wikipedia as a quick fact-checking resource, but the new app is designed to make exploring knowledge on Wikipedia a journey,” developers told me via email.