Related Article: Search within your text messages on iPhone

Can’t Search Messages since iOS 17 Update!

Since this iOS 17 update I can no longer search my messages on my iPhone but I can still search on my iPad… HELP!!! It’s been 2 additional updates since the 17 update and it still isn’t working!!!!

iPhone 14 Pro Max, iOS 17

Posted on Oct 2, 2023 4:06 AM

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Posted on Oct 11, 2023 11:28 AM

Same here. This is big. I have followed steps of turning off Siri & Search and in iMessages based on old articles I've found and nothing solves this problem. I use search a lot in iMessage for personal and work purposes. iMessage search is basically useless right now.

89 replies

Nov 3, 2023 8:38 AM in response to CRA01

I’m glad everyone’s has started to work… meanwhile.. I still can’t search mine and my links and photos shared in messages won’t download either.

I have done everything you all have done and still to do avail… mine will say indexing, then go away to just a black screen… I’ve definitely been defeated because this has taken more energy then needed.

Nov 3, 2023 9:58 AM in response to Thailey1121

I have no reasoning why - but it literally took me dozen attempts to manually index by toggling off and on to sync. Weird thing is sometimes it would act like it was syncing and I would go back and check and it just stopped as if it had finished. And maybe a few more things were added - of which none of the items added made sense. All over the place in terms of date range. Just keep repeating this manual process and for some reason - one day it clicks and works. Trust me - I feel your pain and I was so close to smashing my phone and throw myself on the floor screaming. Searching my texts and photos is the brain of my work! I was helpless.

Nov 6, 2023 3:46 AM in response to Thailey1121

It’s worth a try. I can certainly understand your frustration. I read through all of your posts on the issues you’ve been having, with the cursor issue, all caps issue, can’t search, etc. I hate to say it, but it’s beginning to sound like you might need to try to do a restore from a previous backup to see if that clears up the issues. Do you use iTunes to backup or iCloud?

Nov 7, 2023 3:56 AM in response to ARPU99

Yeah you’re right. It probably is worth a try since all else has failed.


The caps still won’t stay highlighted. The predictive text is messed up. Curse won’t stay.. it’s just a whole mess. I’m going to try the rest this weekend so I don’t have to figure out all these WiFi passwords right now. Thank you for your suggestion.

Nov 30, 2023 8:30 PM in response to Thailey1121

Have you taken your phone into Apple to see if they can assist you? Maybe you’re overlooking something so obvious because you’ve been so stressed over it. I would see if they would allow you to test another phone with your data and see if your data is corrupted at a certain point in the indexing or updating portion. I don’t recall what model your phone is either. I would def take it in and let them get their hands on it. I have years and years and years of texts especially and I was so lost and terrified that my data was lost for search purposes. So I get it.


Just throwing ideas out here but what if you temporarily increased your iCloud storage and uploaded all of your info to that and then attempt to do the whole process again. I did this at the end and I don’t know if it was timing or what - but that is when my phone finally would index. My phone acted totally diff once I added the iCloud storage even tho I have largest capacity at 526gb. No logic here but I was just scared of losing my data because my phone was acting like it had no storage at all. I just kept feeling as if it was going to dump all of data so I made so many diff backups. I hate this for you!

Dec 1, 2023 9:24 AM in response to Thailey1121

I would maybe go through online support and have it escalated to supervisor - I did this up several people - before they figured out the fix was coming in an update. I see there is an update even today I just got notice of - perhaps this addresses something. But back to online support - when you get to a supervisor of a supervisor and they still aren’t able to assist - then ask if this can escalated as a team to your local support and collaborate? There has to be something that they collectively can do to figure this out.

Dec 14, 2023 7:10 AM in response to Thailey1121

HI!!!! Seasons greetings!!

Well the iOS 17.2 update fixed my indexing issues so now I’m able to search my messages!! YAYYY !!!!

But now my messages can’t properly sync to iCloud. 🥴. I was on the phone with Apple for 4.5hrs, they got it to finally sync only for it to finish up and say “sync paused”. so now i

hsve a follow up appt with Apple today at 4:30PM. At this point just give me a new phone with good software.

hope you all are doing well.

My iPadOS synced with no problem.

Can’t Search Messages since iOS 17 Update!

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