Q: Spotlight Search shows no results

Just cross-posting the Reset All Settings solution that worked for me today. Re: iOS 9 Spotlight Search not working properly   

Despite the "All" in that, many settings were left in tact and took maybe 20 mins to run through.   Spotlight now running perfectly and faster than I ever recall.

Good luck!

HI.

is spotlight still working properly?

Hi Luis,

Yes all still working properly 3 days later.  Seems better than I ever remember it, so I wonder if the Spotlight index was degrading for some time.

So maybe the Reset All Settings will fix this bug?  Considering your settings stay the same when upgrading and restoring from backups with fresh installs etc...

Anyhow before I try this, Andrew apart from the below Settings changes you mentioned in the other thread does this Reset option change your app layout?  I've got a few hundred apps and would die if I had to reorganise them all...

• General
  • Siri (off)
  • Spotlight Suggestions (all are on)
  • Accessibility
  • Restrictions
  • iTunes Wifi Sync
• Wi-Fi
  • (unless saved to iCloud via Keychain)
• Notifications
  • Permissions need to be regranted or removed e.g. if you don’t like things appearing on lock screen.
• Do No Disturb,
• Sounds,
• Display & Brightness
• Wallpaper
• TouchID and Passcode
  • Fingers
  • Passcode
  • Access when locked (Today, Notifications, Siri, Reply, Wallet are all allowed)
• Privacy
  • Locations services (off)
• Wallet & Apple Pay (unless saved via iCloud)
• Mail, Contacts, Calendards
  • Account setttings preserved but settings such as “Events Found in Mail” had reset to default (on)

Many settings -- such as iCloud and those specific to third party apps -- were fine after the reset.

greg2p2r wrote:

 

 

Anyhow before I try this, Andrew apart from the below Settings changes you mentioned in the other thread does this Reset option change your app layout?  I've got a few hundred apps and would die if I had to reorganise them all...

Hi.  App layouts and settings have been fine.  Well, one banking app lost its initial registration settings but all others are fine far as I know, suggesting that particular app stores its settings in a more volatile location that is the norm.

I removed a few things I didn't want from Spotlight settings (App Store etc.) and that seemed to cause the blank results issue to sporadically return.  Having now re-enabled everything for Spotlight it's behaving again.    Which is curious...

That really is strange.  So even after doing the reset the bug somehow came back for you.  Okay so as the app layout on the homescreens will stay the same I think I'm going to try the reset all settings later too and see what happens.

Has anyone who's had this bug tried setting the phone up as a brand new device rather than restoring from a backup, if so has that wiped the bug out?

I think it's worth simply turning everything on in spotlight before trying the reset all settings move.

My guess is that our version of this bug is a performance related bug related to asynchronous threads, RAM problems, large numbers of apps with a lot of data, and very bad coding logic (API limited?) with building the results that are displayed to a user. The spotlight app toggle doesn't alter indexing, it just changes display, and setting anything off seems to slow display further (longer to build display results) so that the asynchronous threads timeout and nothing appears.

Suggests Apple needs to fix several different things...

Hello everyone,

I turned search on for each application under Settings, General, Spotlight Search. This resolved the 'not finding contacts nor applications in spotlight' issue for me.
No restart of the iPone 6 was required.

Hope this might help others.

Thx jfaughnan for your suggestion!