“Find on page” not working since IOS 16 update

It is now september 2023 and apple is ignoring this problem!!! I must move over to my windows laptop to find anything in a document!!! Apple, this is pathetic.

I al having the same problem, the option on safari “FIND ON PAGE” is not finding words I am searching for within documents even though I can see the words. The bar opens to search but does not find anything.

As you can see, it detects 80 results for word “Rayos”. When I search it, 0 words are shown to me.

This is really annoying and frustrating, specially when working.

For me, this problem has been here since iOS 16. I use iPad 9th gen.

Update: Since updating to 16.2 “Find” now works with Pages, but still not with Numbers, PDFs or web pages in Safari. When I select “find” or “find on page” the search bar no longer appears and I cannot enter any text to search for.

This is really frustrating. They have changed the search functionality and it’s clearly caused problems….

This works great in webpages, but now when I ‘long press’ in a pdf then drag across the page, instead of getting a pop up with ‘find’ I get a large black ‘blob’ instead. This ‘blob’ disappears when I stop pressing. Clearly a bug!

Apple please fix this!!

[Link Edited by Moderator]

Hi there Lbauer,

We'd like to help, but we'll need more details to understand what's happening:

1. Are you attempting to find a document you downloaded using Safari, and if yes, is it still showing in your downloads within Safari? This link has more details about this: Download items from the web using Safari on Mac
2. If you're instead having an issue loading websites, here are the next steps to take for that: If Safari on Mac doesn't open a webpage or isn’t working as expected
3. Sometimes unexpected behavior can be resolved with a restart: Restart your iPhone
4. You mentioned updating to iOS 16, but the latest version is iOS 16.1.1. You can verify this within Settings > General > About. In case you needed it, this link shows how to first back up, then Update your iPhone or iPad.

Cheers!

The problem is I can’t type any words. The Search box that used to pop up after selecting the Find on Page dropdown no longer appears. Instead, I get this:You can type all you want, but nothing happens. I finally figured out a ridiculous workaround:

Open a web page in Safari

Click on the Share icon

Select Find on Page

When the above box appears, click on keyboard icon

Select Show Keyboard

Type your word and click Search

The box disappears

Select the Share icon again

Select Find on Page again

Now the Search box appears and you can search for your word

I also end up with a floating keyboard on the page that I can’t get rid of

Yes, same here on iOS 16.3.1

searching a pdf for a key word does not work.

I notice it ‘partly’ works as I’m given a total number of keyword found in the document. It’s just the bit where I jump between them in the pdf that returns no results.

See photos….(I’m searching a pdf document for the keyword ‘aux’ in these pics)

COME ON APPLE!

can’t believe they won’t find out a solution for this

I notice the same behaviour searching certain PDFs while viewing them in safari. But in my case I searched a page number 112 and it found 211 - so I did some trial and error. When I searched for “illness” (a word used many times in the document) I got nothing. When I searched for “ssenlli” it found all occurrences of the word “illness”. It’s the same for anything I search - I have to type the string in reverse. If I search words on the title page it finds them as expected and other entire PDFs work as normal. I hadn’t noticed before today but don’t use this feature for PDFs in safari a lot as I usually download them. I may have had the problem and just moved on and ignored it and forgot about it but since I just upgraded to iPadOS17.1.1 yesterday I assumed it might be a bug related to the new OS. Looking here I’m wondering if it’s older than that. I’d be curious to hear what result others here have if they try searching their string in reverse? Anyone up for an experiment? I’ve included a screenshot of the issue in action below:

I am using a new iPad with iPadOS 16.2, build 20C65

I open a pdf file, then activate SEARCH in the app (Preview?). The search dialog allows typing into the search field, but as soon as text is entered, the the dialog closes. The search parameter is not acted on. The dialog closes before three letters can be entered. This is not intermittent. Search is not useful and very frustrating.

It's broken. So far, I see the issue with an updated (16.2) iPhone 11 Pro Max and an iPad Pro Gen 1. It looks broken because the magnifier appears with the text box, but as soon as I type any character, the screen goes black and then the document reappears. No search results appear and tapping the magnifier again doesn't do anything.

Following up with more info…

I had installed Adobe Acrobat. It installed a plug-in that attached to the (Preview or Files?) app. 

But I could not access the free version (was presented with the option to enroll in paid version only with no obvious way to bypass or close that window - so I quit the Acrobat app & deleted it.) That plugin is still identified in the header of the pdf page alongside the search magnifier button. I don’t know if it is involved in the problem.

More follow up…

I did a factory reset (iPad pro 12” M2 512)

the pdf document1 that previously failed the SEARCH, failed again. But other documents had success (pdf document2 & xls doc1). I thought maybe the pdf document1 was broken.

I closed the xls doc1 with the search dialog opened and a search parameter typed into the field.

When I reopened the pdf document1 the search dialog remained open & the subsequent searches were successful. The document was not broken.

My thorough test shows that Find on page function must have some sorta “fake caching” problem.

After I restart (power cycle) my ipad with a long push (holding), the first Find on page attempt seems to be succesful with a ratio of app. 3 from 4. The second attempt fails almost always even in the same pdf. So it has nothing to do with broken or healthy pdf assumptions.

I tested only Safari with an 8th gen Ipad running on 16.1.1