iPhone photos and messages not indexing after iOS 17 Update

Per the Apple help desk this is known issue. Even the person troubleshooting my issue had this exact problem. We just need more people to report it so that they prioritize fixing in their next release. Frustrating that this is happening still after several updates.

I restored my data from an iCloud backup from an iPhone 12 Pro Max to an iPhone 15 Pro Max and none of my messages have indexed. I even wiped the iPhone 15 Pro Max back to factory settings and did a restore directly from my iPhone 12 Pro Max - nothing. I was working with a support technician who eventually handed it over to a Senior tech, who inevitably ended up telling me it is a "known issue" and to "keep my phone updated."

Very disappointed. I use the "one year ago" feature daily, and scroll through shared photos with my contacts quite frequently both for work and personal reasons. Now 10+ years of photos sent through messages cannot be accessed unless I sit there and scroll through the texts for hours.

This makes me want to keep my iPhone 12 Pro Max - at least my messages are all indexed on it. So disappointed.

I still have my old iPhone (13). I have updated to iOS 17 and all the recent patches, but my photos are still a mess. When I search for something specific, I get hundreds of incorrect results. I rely heavily on the photo indexing feature, and I went to a lot of trouble in the past to tag my photos.

Please fix this problem ASAP as it is beyond frustrating to those of us who use the indexing feature every day.

Same issue here, not sure if the phone needs to stay on charge while it indexes everything?

I contacted Apple about it. I think they’ll eventually do an iOS 17 update to repair it.

I wasn’t sure if it was a transfer from old phone to iPhone 15 or an iOS 17 issue. I daily look at “Feature” photos and then my “one year ago” photos. It’s not recognizing any in the one year ago. I can even type the date in and it only gives date found in text of photos, even though I can scroll back to the date in the camera roll and find pictures taken on this date there.

I still have my old phone and it’s working properly but I also haven’t upgraded to iOS 17 on it either, that’s why I wasn’t sure which might be causing the issue: new phone or new iOS? But I want it fixed! Temper tantrum over! 😉

Well I guess I’m glad to know that’s the problem and it wasn’t just my transferring of data that would never get a redo or fix. I use mine just to take a trip down memory lane and if you just put in the month and year it will pull those up. Just not as handy. Maybe that will work for you too though until/if they get a fix.

Similar problem here. Since updating to iOS17 my iPhone library is only partially sync’d. Every search just brings up a percentage (or none)!of what it does on my Mac. I wish there were some way to force synchronisation.

Mine is also broken after upgrades, still broke with 17.1. iPhone won’t sync photos or align with iCloud. But the iPad is working fine, same upgrade processes same accounts…my iCloud has 19000 photos, suddenly my phone just sat there and deleted down to 7000 photos and is frozen with various sync messages…sync up, sync down, phone to hot, optimizing system, restoring from backup, etc…messages and photo count keep varying but no sync is happening.. processor and network traffic are low, phone gets hot anytime I change any setting

Now it’s over a month since your post, and I just restored my data from iCloud to my new iPhone15 Pro Max and have the same issue with photos (as well as some other glitches.) super frustrating and disappointing as I, too, use the photo search function constantly.

I think I have to return this phone.

Has anyone found a workaround for this? Spoke with senior support today, seems like some indexing took place while iPhone was charging but still most history when referencing the imessage photo/link history under each individual contact name is not indexing. (iOS Version 17.1.1) Any tips would be appreciated...

Just came across this thread as I am having the same issue; I only bought the phone a couple of weeks ago and it seems this issue is still not fixed. Since I use photos for work and have always loved how easy Apple makes it to find old photos by searching for a specific date, location or simply a search term, I am not happy that I can't do this anymore (I have 100k photos in the Cloud, which I am paying for)

So if you can believe this, mine has been working perfectly since 17.1 …last night I updated the 17.2 and none of my indexing is working… I can’t even search a word that I was able to search yesterday and result over 100 photos now I get zero nothing… This is definitely frustrating because I had some things I needed to search in my photos for some post for the holidays and now again I’m stuck like I was before 😡