Search function not working in apps

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Level 1

10 points

Search function not working in apps

This happened to me a few times in the last couple of months, most notably in Mail app: search inside the app does not work, at all. I tried rebuilding inbox, disabling Spotlight index using the sudo mutil -Eai off and then sudo mutil -Eai on Terminal commands, deleting the Spotlight cache files in Library, starting up in safe mode, adding and removing Macintosh HD drive in "Privacy" in Spotlight, System Settings. Sometimes, after I restart the search function starts working for a few minutes (and only for some subjects/senders, not all) and then completely stops again. I think the last time I made it work was with a complete sistem reinstall which is absurd. Any ideea how to fix this? Before Mac OS 26 Spotlight also had some problems (couldn't find anything, calculator function in spotlight was not working) at the same time with the search function in Mail but now spotlight seems to work reasonably ok (still doesn't find files except when press CMD + 2). Did anybody go through this and manage to fix it? Apple support also didn't help (tried everything they threw at me).

iMac 24″, macOS 26.0

Posted on Sep 26, 2025 1:14 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

bogflamicom Author

Level 1

10 points

Sep 30, 2025 6:45 AM in response to MLefers

Actually I think I found the issue. I use a USB token to login to company software and if I start-up the computer with the USB phisically disconnected, it works flawlessly. If I keep it connected, all search is messed up (not only in Mail app, but also in System Settings, Notes and even Spotlight). So try to disconnect every USB drive/accessory and then restart.

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Answer 2

MLefers

Level 1

26 points

Sep 28, 2025 3:04 PM in response to bogflamicom

For the last week or so, I noticed after having macOS 26 since 9/15/25 that I cannot successfully search for a specific email/name or keyword inside my email on my MacBook Pro 14" M1. However, when I went thru the painful task on scrolling thru hundreds of emails and finding what I was looking for, and "reopened them today", they would then finally show up under the search bar when I checked again. This is annoying! I thought I had lost the emails, luckily I was able to manually find them, but honestly I don't remember seeing them the first 5X I looked for them, which is why I went into the search bar. Not sure why this is happening, and wondering if I'm still getting emails trickling in from the update... I also noticed my email count doesn't seem correct, I should have a lot more from what I remember. On another note, I seen some people mentioning Spotlight was a workaround, some had issues with that working at all, and some said it was their way to locate some specific name/keywords. It's working for me as far as I can tell, and the same emails I was looking for today did come up fine using it.

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Answer 3

Oct 2, 2025 6:34 AM in response to bogflamicom

Been having this issue for months, it's so terrible. I have an email that I know was sent to me within the last week and im searching a couple of keywords that are pretty specific to one series of emails and nothing comes up. It just stays on "Searching..." and never finds anything. So I have to log into gmail like 20yrs ago and just search in there to find it, super annoying.

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