ios26 update affecting messages indexing with an itunes backup

Let me preface by saying that I have seen others with similar issues that all call for various icloud related fixes that have had differing levels of resolution.

My phone is not sync'd with icloud but still backed up through itunes on a windows machine. The main reason for this is music related (I have a large music library that consists of music not found in Apple Music and therefore not eligible for Music Match).

Regardless, when I updated my phone to ios26, the search function in messages was essentially completely lost.

Only photos that have been sent since the update show in the "photos" section of the user. Any previous photos - which are on the phone still and can be scrolled back to see - are not shown under the user.

Additionally, any messages and their contents sent before the update do not show in search.

The results when searching show that messages are still indexing.

This has been going on since update day two weeks ago (I have since updated again to 26.0.1 with no change.

A visit to the local Apple Store actually had one of the genius reps duplicate the issue on his phone so I'm hoping this is a known bug that is being worked on.

Has anyone found similar issues and a way to fix? Again - this isn't an icloud syncing issue as I do not sync to icloud.