Search in the Notes app doesn’t 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

Please check your email accounts that store all your notes. They are synced to Google, iCloud, AOL, Exchange, Outlook, Yahoo or any other etc.

Where were the Notes that you lost? See the pic below. You will get your answer.

Yes i can agree!! Finally they fixed it

Same issue with apple notes not working on my newest Ipad. It is at least 2 years and problem not solved. Have done all of your suggested fixes, the newer ipad won’t search notes.

old ipad will, they both operate ios 16.2

very frustrating. Wery crappy this bug still exists too Notes

Feel the same exact way.

Spent hours trying calendar apps because not only is the default calendar not particularly helpful but I’ve run into issues. Now, you can’t mark whether you’re “busy” in an event and and my meetings are overbooking. I change the notification settings so I don’t receive so many and the settings default back on their own.

My search has also stopped working I. notes the last year. So I’ve had to use Evernote. Then, this morning I wasn’t able to create an app specific password on the site, I had to use Google Chrome because there is a glitch with Safari.

I pay too much to have to cobble together OTHER apps because Apple’s default programs (that I need for my business) are mediocre on a good day. Or create days/months long issues on the worst. Part of me wonders if this is purposeful, to encourage more App Store sales.

Either way hired a consultant last month to help me think through workflow and transitioning completely from Apple because this is not worth it.

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.

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.

I'm just adding my experience to the thread. I am also an avid Notes user and have questioned the search before but today is significantly noticeable that the search feature is busted. I am on 16.6.1. On my iPhone, the search is being finicky but my Mac seems to be okay. I am also usually searching for the "subject" word. If I search on my phone, it won't come up, but when I go to Mac it does and when I try one phone again, it will appear. I also tested it so much that I could see a result on the folder I was in and decided to search for it to see if it would come up, knowing that it was there, and the search still provided zero results. It is very frustrating when I have numerous notes in one folder to dig through.

I am running Sonoma 14.1.2 on an Airbook M1. I was having the same Notes unsearchable problem.

Then I remembered it had started occurring (I believed) when I put in a limitation of Spotlight searching certain Folders on my Mac, in Settings > Siri & Spotlight > Spotlight Privacy.

I removed the folders that I had put there, and after restarting Notes, voila! search in Notes started working again!

Weirdly, I went back in to Spotlight Privacy, and put the same folders I had before, went back to Notes, restarted it, and ... Search was STILL working.

Hope that helps!

Go figure that one out Apple.

I don't get it. The iCloud.com version of Notes can't even "Find" within a given note. Web app only searches the list of notes on the left side, but not within the note. Also Notes for the past decade, only searches across notes and finds the first instance of a string. Both of these make using this app for notes pointless, but I can do the find from my macOS machine Notes app instead the Win machine where I'm using iCloud webapp.

Mac OS Memo in 2024 still no fix 🤣 It's just like iOS clipboard permission bug. They've been letting it as fukked as it is for years. I really wonder where Apple is going these days. My guess is that fixing bugs don't get theme any good on their performance review.

I too am a heavy NOTES user until the last 6 months.

My return key no longer returned to the next line & the up & down arrows not longer allowed me to navigate line by line w/ the note…they took be to other NOTES!

You may have just saved me throwing my ipad OUT the window.

THANK YOU!

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.

Yeah same issues here I already switched off of the piece of **** known as apple because I’m tired of them gaslighting us into thinking they’re soooo superior. When Samsungs have essentially every feature apple has and more. Plus you’re able to change the UI into pretty much the same setup as an iPhone so it’s not even that big of a learning curve to use.

I chatted with Apple support about this ridiculous problem and was directed to go to Notes in iCloud (meaning I have to take the time to log in and do all those extra log in steps just to get a password from notes). Voila, the search works fine in iCloud.