Whenever Apple introduces improvements to Spotlight on iPhones and iPads, I have vivid PPSSD (post-personal-search stress disorder) and remember the glorious years when we had a decent on-device search solution on Android.

Then it was gone and Google, the search company to end all search companies, pretended nothing happened, that it was never there, and whoever really wanted a central search solution on their phone?

In-app search, as the feature was called when it launched in 2016, was a Google search app and widget addition that found content in the various apps you've installed on your phone.

Todoist and Zomato were the two examples that I saw, and trust me, it was so much easier to tap the Google widget that already exists on my homescreen and look for a restaurant or a task instead of finding the app I need, opening it, spotting the search button or bar, then writing my query.

At one point, Google also integrated Personal Search (because of course they changed the name of the feature a few times) inside the Google app on Android, and on the desktop.

With better support from Google and developers, this could've made the Google widget a central place for all searches on Android, be it for system-wide data stored privately on the phone or for public web queries.

First, contacts disappeared from the autofill results then everything related to Personal Search was gone.

Whether it was people mistakenly thinking Google was publishing their personal details online or the advent of Google Assistant as an idyllic be-all end-all search experience, I'm not sure, but the end result is that you can only find and launch apps with it now, which is next to useless.

Besides, it offers fewer features than what we had with Personal Search

It looks like Google could add more universal search features with Android 12, but the details about that are quite vague