None of the search works in Big Sur Mail.app

Try a search and leave it for 20minutes. I think the problem could be very,very slow results as opposed to 100% not working. Seems to be the case for me, but only have the 1 machine where that’s happening.

There is a corespotlightd for each logged in user, you can see on the right of the window which user is the owner of each process. And now I run all day with two processes running, fast switching between users and never logging off, and Mail search works. If by mistake I log off of one user the bug happens !

What I see is that Mail search works even when I have two corespotlightd processes running (it happens because I fast switch between users, so both users are logged in and each users has is own corespotlightd process). Now if one user logs off, I see only one process and mail search is broken.

The only time where I see two processes and Mail search is broken, is when a third user has logged off: then the two processes are impacted, and they will both need to be force killed.

I Keep getting this issue in 11.2.2 and 11.2.3.

I found the suggestions in forums to 1. Quit mail app, 2. Open holding shift a few times, then 3. rebooting. It works but the issue re-appears after few hours. Is there a permanent fix available rather rebooting overtime.

I have been having this issue on my MacBook Pro after upgrading to Big Sur. I now just bought a brand MacBook Air. Set it up fresh (not copying, transferring or migrating anything). Exactly the same issue (search only working temporarily if I reboot after opening Mail with shift, but then very quickly reverts again to not working). Easily reproducible.

This is core functionality of an OS that needs to be fixed ASAP as it destroys productivity of the product.

Happy for you, but the problem remains for a lot of us !

For the ones still affected, more info here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252035294?answerId=254556705022#254556705022

In short, it happens also on a 'like new' Mac with 11.2, with multiple users. When one user logs off, the other users will lose search capabilities in Mail. Incredible but true !

After leaving a few searches for 20/30 minutes each run it's now sped up to about 10 seconds, so sludgy but totally usable.

Same issue, search fails every time. No results for any search.

Searching by sender, subject, all terms fails to produce even one result. Had to go to web iCloud interface to find messages from this week.

Come on Apple. Where is the excellence?

Well, I may have jumped the gun, but found something interesting. Search seems to work fine until I switch to a different account on the same mac. When I switch back to my admin account the search is then broken again including smart mailboxes. Rebooting seems too get functionality back, but we already have see that behavior...

Indeed, this is a major problem for those who are experiencing it, making Apple Mail useless for those who have to regularly find earlier messages. I have switched to Spark.

The problem is it’s not clear what about a system causes it. I have a MacBook Pro and an iMac – the laptop is fine, the iMac has the problem.

It is the worst single Apple software problem I have experienced in nearly 20 years of OS X - macOS use. Sometimes - rarely, Mail search with Big Sur on my iMac works. Usually not. Something has gone horribly wrong and Apple is SILENT about this issue affecting a LOT of us. My sense is that the indexing is really broken. Especially for us that have large mailboxes and are storing our mail in the cloud. I wonder if a re-indexing operation with the Big Sur downgrade <sic> is taking insane amounts of time to complete with inconsistent or limited connections to the cloud or if changes in Apple's cloud infrastructure are somehow involved. It's a black box.

Same issue. 2020 MacBook Pro 16", BigSur 11.1 . I did the Shift+Mail, quite, times 2, reboot. It made it worse. Before I was able to get a hand full of worthless results of a search. Now, I get no results.

I also tried removing Gmail accounts. That did nothing.

It’s broken, that’s a given. But it would be good to try work out in what way. I’ve been playing about with deactivating Non-iCloud email addresses to see if it speeds up. Would be good to have others try the same so I can validate my results.

Will continue to post updates.

apparently... until switching between accounts on one machine and logging out from the other account. Upon return in the first account, all search is broken again. And again, and again. Unfortunately even in 11.2.1 still the case