It (purposefully?) doesn't find everything.

For instance (this is just sequoia, but same for ios) searching for "improve" finds:

"improve assistive voice features" (I turned it off)

and diagnostic & usage data with: "improve siri & dictation" (I turned it off)

but under spotlight, it doesn't find "help apple improve search" (I turned that off too)

There are reasons graphical interfaces exist. Otherwise why don't we hide everything behind one single search box? And unless you are a die-hard Apple fan, you may not always know the correct feature name to search for.

If I want Siri to talk faster do I go to:

- Accessibility > Siri > Siri Speaking Rate

or

- Siri > Voice

Because in iOS 27 these two are absolutely not the same thing, and the one you probably want is the latter.

Normally I'd say that's at least somewhat valid but Apple also has a nasty habit of coming up with new names for things everyone else had a name for for 30 years already. Then they do bizarre things like when I tried to help my mom with her airpod settings the other day - searching "airpod" gave no hits. I mean...what?

Searching for "airpod" in settings brings up - Accessibility, "Headphones/AirPods/Beats", Conversation Boost, Noise Cancellation, Press and hold duration, Press speed, Transparency mode

Not sure what went wrong for you, these results seem pretty much on point.

This literally happened yesterday. It tried to bring me to a safari search and I got no other hits. Could've been just a buggy moment with search who knows.

I tested it just now. My AirPods are connected to the iPhone, and searching “AirPods” gives me the accessibility settings for them, not the actual AirPods’ settings. I have to open the Settings app and then they’re up there, but it’s ridiculous that they don’t show in the search.

Great, Apple hired the team from Microsoft search too.

That doesn’t surprise me. Search in Settings is sketchy.

The other day “login” didn’t produce Login Items. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you tried it right now and it worked fine.

That's putting a bandaid on an infected wound.