Search in the Notes app doesn’t work

I’m very very active note user, my note contain over thousands of words. it does have this issues before. But My major issue was: it did not show key words like it used to be. I trying everything including customer service (lead me to no where), but eventually I find out myself: each of note can not be too long, (let’s say may be one thousand words), if you put too many word in one note, you’ll have problem to search the key words, simply it didn’t show any result, make you a lot of aggravations, but if you separate this long note into two note, the problem will be resolved right away. Customer service should told me but never any, even I spoke with them for multiple times.

I'm in a similar boat in that I noticed recently (as of early December 2023) that searching for a keyword in my notes was only returning a fraction of the results I was expecting on my iPhone 12 and Macbook Air (M1), both with updated software. I keep everything in iCloud (i.e., not saved locally on either device). But it works perfectly if you put quotes around the search term (e.g., "Mike"). Search also seems to work perfectly without quotes on icloud.com. Agree that this is a strange bug and should be fixed.

Just found a fix for this. If you put an inverted comma before the search term it pulls up the full list. ". I guess it is assuming that you are looking for a fixed term with just one inverted comma - so two don't seem to be neccessary - although two also work.

NOTES APP - SEARCH NOT WORKING - SOLVED!

(in my case)

These are the steps I followed (though they may not ALL be necessary)

1. Scroll to Notes app from “Settings”
2. Then on that page under “ALLOW NOTES TO ACCESS” tap on “Siri & search”
3. Under “WHILE SEARCHING” turn on the switch “Show App in Search”
4. The “Show Content in Search” switch option then appears - turn this on
5. Go back a step and tap “Accounts”
6. Under ACCOUNTS choose “iCloud”
7. This takes you to “Apple ID”
8. Choose “iCloud”
9. Under “APPS USING ICLOUD” choose “Show All”
10. Choose “Notes”
11. On my iPhone “Sync this iPhone” was turned on but ”Manage Storage” had a spinning wheel
12. Turn off the switch but STOP THERE and DON’T  tap “Delete from My iPhone” - tap “Cancel” instead
13. Tap “Manage Storage”
14. DO NOT “Delete from iCloud” but go back a step
15. On my iPhone the amount of storage then appeared
16. I stopped there and checked my Notes app and low & behold search was working again

I had this same recurring issue re notes being unable to search accurately. I tried all of the above solutions with no success. The issue turned out to be insufficient storage space on my iPhone to cache/search accurately. After I provided my device with sufficient available (unused) storage space, the search functionality (not only for notes but also for mail, app search, etc) was restored to full functionality after a restart.

I tried several things related to plists, indexing, etc as mentioned by everyone else also. I noticed that my Notes app wasn't synching properly even after turning the sync on/off in my AppleID settings. I signed out of my AppleID on my computer, restarted, and signed back in. After doing that my Mail, and Notes began indexing again. We'll see if that lasts, but may be worth trying.

BEST ANSWER is from ARPU99 on Nov 1,2023:

"I went to Settings/Messages/Siri & Search. I then turned off all 7 buttons. I turned off my iPhone for a few minutes. Turned it back on, went back and turned on all of those 7 buttons. It may have been the fix."

I also toggled off the buttons under Settings/Notes/Siri & Search. And toggled them back on when I turned my phone back on.

Now search in Notes works like a charm again. Thank you ARPU99!

I found a fix!

Like many of you, I could not search in notes app. I have version 17.2.1

I tried closing notes app and reopening it with no success

I tried turning my iphone off and back on with no success

Finally I tried turning Airplane mode on and then back off and all the search functionality came back!

I hope it works for all of you! Let me know.

I don’t know if this is a permanent fix, but as of right now it fixed my problem:

Settings > Notes > siri & search >

I toggled everything off and then back on. Killed the app, reopened it, and as of now search works great again. Partial phrases bring up all the stuff again, and full phrases are finding everything.

I was mostly having problems with full phrases actually, but even partial phrases give more results now.

NOTES APP - SEARCH NOT WORKING - SOLVED!

(in my case)

These are the steps I followed (though they may not ALL be necessary)

1. Scroll to Notes app from “Settings”
2. Then on that page under “ALLOW NOTES TO ACCESS” tap on “Siri & search”
3. Under “WHILE SEARCHING” turn on the switch “Show App in Search”
4. The “Show Content in Search” switch option then appears - turn this on
5. Go back a step and tap “Accounts”
6. Under ACCOUNTS choose “iCloud”
7. This takes you to “Apple ID”
8. Choose “iCloud”
9. Under “APPS USING ICLOUD” choose “Show All”
10. Choose “Notes”
11. On my iPhone “Sync this iPhone” was turned on but ”Manage Storage” had a spinning wheel
12. Turn off the switch but STOP THERE and DON’T  tap “Delete from My iPhone” - tap “Cancel” instead
13. Tap “Manage Storage”
14. DO NOT “Delete from iCloud” but go back a step
15. On my iPhone the amount of storage then appeared
16. I stopped there and checked my Notes app and low & behold search was working again

Going to Settings, Siri & Search, Notes and turning off Suggestions Notifications helped me for the iOS version 16.1.1

I was having the exact same problem - and freaking out about it! I tried the "quotes" hack and it worked perfectly. I put my search word in quotes and got all of the notes that contain that word. Whew! Thank you so much!

This is super annoying but I figured out a semi work around. Before you would open the Notes app and swipe down to show the Search feature. This does not work anymore.

You now need to open the SPECIFIC note you want to search > Tap the 3 dots in the upper right corner > Tap Find in Note. From there you can search but only in that specific note.

Very frustrating if you wanted to search all notes on your device like you used to be able to before.

It’s now working for me after iOS 17.1 update. I let it index while plugged in and on Wifi overnight. Less than 12 hours and I can now search all Notes and also Messages search works again too.

You can search the long note that isn’t working by using “Find in Note”. Here are the steps:

Open a note.

Tap circle with 3 dots in upper right.

Tap Find in Note and enter word or phrase.

Any word or phrase will be found, all instances will be highlighted, and will show the total # of instances with up and down arrows to move to next and previous instance.

Works well for the long notes that don’t work with the normal search due to them having too many words.