Core Spotlight Semantic Search - still non-functional for 1+ year after WWDC24?
After more than a year since the announcement, I'm still unable to get this feature working properly and wondering if there are known issues or missing implementation details.
Current Setup:
- Device: iPhone 16 Pro Max
- iOS: 26 beta 3
- Development: Tested on both Xcode 16 and Xcode 26
- Implementation: Following the official documentation examples
The Problem: Semantic search simply doesn't work. Lexical search functions normally, but enabling semantic search produces identical results to having it disabled. It's as if the feature isn't actually processing.
Error Output (Xcode 26):
[QPNLU][qid=5] Error Domain=com.apple.SpotlightEmbedding.EmbeddingModelError Code=-8007 "Text embedding generation timeout (timeout=100ms)"
[CSUserQuery][qid=5] got a nil / empty embedding data dictionary
[CSUserQuery][qid=5] semanticQuery failed to generate, using "(false)"
In Xcode 16, there are no error messages at all - the semantic search just silently fails.
Missing Resources: The sample application mentioned during the WWDC24 presentation doesn't appear to have been released, which makes it difficult to verify if my implementation is correct.
Would really appreciate any guidance or clarification on the current status of this feature. Has anyone in the community successfully implemented this?
Same for me! I go nuts with it! Impossible to debug or understand
Found it guys…
First, the pattern is reversed:
disableSemanticSearch = True (default) is semantic search ON…
Second finding… despite prepare() it doesn't ensure that you don't get the error.
Adding a "dummy first request" gets the error, and the following requests work (with correct results)