Mail search not working after Big Sur install

I can't add much technically to this discussion, but I can add my voice to the rising cacophony. A few days after upgrading directly from the latest version of Catalina to m(sic)acOS 11.1, and thinking that it had all gone too smoothly, I found I had the same problem. (For reference, this is on a 2016 27" iMac, which has been restarted several times since the upgrade.)

I have multiple users and have been flitting between them checking that they are all set up correctly after the upgrade. I found that the "__gabe__" suggested fix of quitting and shift-launching Mail a few times, and then restarting the iMac fixed the problem... for now, at least. I also noticed that, after the restart, it took an inordinately long time (-10 minutes) after logging in for the spinning cursor to disappear, the desktop to become active and the login app windows to appear.

FWIW, that was my experience. I'll add to it if all goes sour again.

What sbennet5 said.. its getting old really quickly. Not being able to search mail is RIDICULOUS. so now I have to go to my iPhone or gmail web depending on account - search works perfectly there and apparently in Icloud web as well. Please Apple. We know mail has never been your favorite app to take care of, but this is ridiculous!

I'm about 4-days into this solution and it seems to be holding (even through reboots). Following some of the other suggestions in this thread (most of which did not work), I restarted into Safe Mode, shut down and then did a regular reboot and the issue has fixed and has been holding. I am on a single user iMac.

This solution helped me a bit. Mail in Big Sur is beyond sluggish - at least 1 second minimum to do any action, and often upwards of 8-10 seconds to delete, see content on an opened message, etc. I've run Onyx and cleaned out all the caches, rebuilt the indexes twice, and run this series of commands (note that they should be run as 4 separate commands, with the restart after the first two).

My problem was resolved after I rebooted my whole system in safe mode, which clears the system cache. Shut down the machine. Then power on while holding the shift button. Then try searching mail again. It should work. Then restart the machine to exit safe mode.

Are you the sole user of the device?

People who have multiple users find that the problem re-occurs if another user logs on.

I find that simply logging out and back into MacBook resolves the problem (temporarily). But the problem restarts if another user logs into their account.

This needs to be fixed, as it's frustrating to have to log out and in again as a workaround.

Further to my earlier post, I have now found this too. Another user logging in breaks __gabe__'s fix that I applied, and only logging out and in again re-fixes it. It is now clear that this is a bug, and the company that we all helped to make one of the richest in the world needs to fix it quickly. Anybody listening? (Or do all you lot in the big do(ugh)nut have your ears stuffed with dollar bills?)

So I have been having the same problem, and finally, I hope, I have managed to resolve the issue.

I created a Big Sur Installation USB and reinstalled Big Sur by booting from the installation media. All my documents and files were safely backed up, just incase. And though the install took a while (about 45 min) - my search in email is now working normally. (touch wood it stays that way) - and could work for you too.

The Big Sur mail search failure caused by switching users (and possibly other reasons) seems to be a problem with the 'corespotlightd' process. It may be remembering the prior user and not switching internally. I'm able to find this process with the Activity Monitor and force-quit it. It then automatically relaunches, probably by the 'spotlight' process. Once the force-quit and auto-relaunch occurs I'm able to search Apple Mail again without problem. I presume many/all of the other more drastic workarounds are indirectly causing this troublesome MacOS process to also get relaunched -- though no way to be certain. This problem seems to be hanging around too long -- would hope someone from Apple can debug this armed with this apparently small failure domain.

Thanks for the tip. Sadly this is not working for me.I've killed that process repeatedly and no change in Mail just returning no results on things I know are there in abundance. Apple PLEASE! Going into iCloud when I need to search mail and that is very clunky as you can only search one mailbox at a time and when you switch mailboxes you have to retype your search. This is a terrible fail of a most basically important service. Its 2021! LEt's get this fixed.

Good find. I've tried that and worked for me. Search in mail was not working but as soon as I quit that process, all is well again (at least for now).

@Gregg R.

I don't use iCloud mail but as soon as I type in the search field, I have the option to select 'all mailboxes' from the left hand pane. And this works as expected. I can also limit to particular folders by selecting 'all inboxes' etc, or a particular folder for a particular mailbox.

[Personal Information Edited by Moderator]

@moderators

Are user names not visible when clicking reply?

I can see 'date time in response to' then the full user name. Is that not visible to all users?

If so, I'm not sure on the difference between that and including a user name in a post?

Just curious and happy to abbreviate names in posts but if replying to 2 posts sometimes easier to include an @ mention.

Is that any different to seeing a full user name above the post?

That's a lot of steps (unless it's a permanent fix).

I find the following alternative works, although it's a temporary workaround:

Either:

Log out and log back in (no need to close mail or other programs).

Or:

no need to log out or close programs. Just open Activity Monitor and quit the process 'corespotlightd'.

Then search works again.

After your discovery that killing corespotlightd and letting it restart itself, I would've thought that this would give Apple some useful information to be able to permanently fix this problem. I haven't yet seen any input from Apple in this discussion though.

Hi, J C. I can't claim any credit for that 'killing corespotlightd' discovery. I can't recall who posted that originally but it wasn't me!

I agree that it does seem like a simple thing to program as a workaround at least. Or, to point Apple in the right direction to permanently fix any underlying problem.