Hi, after installing Tahoe, the search in the Mail app stopped working correctly - did not find any of the new emails or find some of the newer, but not all. I tried rebuilding, which took a few days, restarting the app, restarting the Mac, but none of it helped. Now I have Tahoe 26.0.1 (25A362) and the problem is still the same.
MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 26.0
I found a solution which now works for me!
Apple changed this in macOS Tahoe. Mail now searches only the current folder by default.
To search your entire mailbox again:
Once you do this, Mail will remember the setting and use global search from now on.
If you can’t see Search in, turn on the Favourites Bar:
View → Show Favourites Bar (at the bottom of the menu).
I found a solution which now works for me!
Apple changed this in macOS Tahoe. Mail now searches only the current folder by default.
To search your entire mailbox again:
Once you do this, Mail will remember the setting and use global search from now on.
If you can’t see Search in, turn on the Favourites Bar:
View → Show Favourites Bar (at the bottom of the menu).
I created an empty mailbox called "All Mail" under "On My Mac". I go to that mailbox, and search, but nothing shows up. HOWEVER, it gives me an option to search "All Mailboxes", an option that does not appear when I search any other mailbox. When I choose that option, search results show results from all mailboxes. Dumb workaround for sure.
It seems that search only looks at the current mailbox. I *thought* I saw a switch under the search box one time to make it global, which it was before Tahoe. But I don't see it again.
I did a search for "from:andrea" with the Inbox selected, and it found nothing. When I clicked in the sidebar to change to the Trash mailbox, all of the messages from that person showed up.
I don't know why they'd change this without a means of overriding it.
I have had the same problem for some time. I believe it is because I have specific mailboxes and a mass of rules to distribute my mails.
Looking at some suggestions here I did the following and it seems to work fine:
Create a new SMART mailbox. Set the option to "Message is READ". I suddenly have about 57000 mails all visible.
Hope it help everybody
Yes, I use Spotlight now for searching for specific mails, but when searching a mailbox with thousands of emails from the same person and dealing with similar topics via Spotlight is not possible. So, what I am doing now is searching eg in the MS Exchange mailbox via Outlook - so, an interesting combination of an app, which until now worked well and I am still using it (Mail) and an app, which is otherwise horrible and I use it only for searching. This happened already in some previous OS update, but now it does not get better.
As answered also by LuiW - rebuilding already done - takes plenty of time and did not help anyway.
I had the same issue after updating to Tahoe. I was really ******, because no one was able to help me.
I went to Apple Store - they tried all the solutions I have already tried at home, these people working there are clueless. Then they escalated this to who knows where (maybe to Mars?) So I tried to get help over the phone. They were more knowledgeable but still issue persisted. lady told me to wait until all the emails will download (after the night it was all the same)
Since I have a lot of email and have to search for old emails all the tie at my work it was really frustrating for me. No one helped me!!! Finally I got the clue myself, to reinstall Tahoe. And it worked!. I guess I must apply for position in Apple ;-)
Did you try using Spotlight to search for the emails?
I have the same issue. I can only find mails with Spotlight
I did this multiple times - it did not work.
Mail says "searching" but nothing happens. At one point, this message vanished and no mails are retrieved. Besides, Spotlight index is rebuilding every time I am using it to search for something.
It's a serious issue. I have to log in to iCloud via Safari to see whether I got any new mails and to retrieve older ones. A lot of Apple account mails are missing in Mail and none can be found across various other accounts.
Having the same issue with native mac OS mail. Search stopped working. Have restarted my system multiple times and it didn't help
Spotlight does not find emails any more.
I also use a 3rd party app called Find Any File (FAF) off of the App Store. Not sure it would help in your situation.
You're a genius !
Search in Mail app after installing Tahoe not working correctly
