Remove Top Hits from Mac Mail High Sierra

Okay so I am going to give this one more try. The original question is related to a feature in the Mail app on a laptop or desktop. When you search for a specific email using the Search bar it displays the results of the search with two emails at the top that are separated from the other results. Mail calls them “Top Hits”. Usually these top hits are not the email you were searching for. The question is, “Can you turn off the “Top Hit” feature in Mail?”

Things we know:

1. This is not related to Spotlight and searching in a Finder window.

2. There is not a setting in Mail Preferences to turn off “Top Hits”.

3. You have to use the Search feature in Mail to make “Top Hits” appear.

4. People reply to questions without reading the whole question and/or the other posts. 😀

Suggestions given that do not appear to work:

1. In Mail Preferences under “Viewing", turn off "show most recents messages at the top”

   This reorders your emails, showing your oldest ones first. It does not change the Top Hits issue (see screen shots below)

2. In System Preferences, turn off “Allow Spotlight Suggestions in Look Up”

   This changed how the results appeared in a Finder Window but not when I searched in the Mail App. It does not change the Top Hits issue (see screenshots below)

3. Open mail app take cursor on top menu bar view > click on hide related messages .

   This hides previous emails in a multiple email conversation. This is not related to searching in the Mail search bar. It does not change the Top Hits issue

4. Following this article, Search for emails in Mail on your Mac - Apple Support , create a smart mailbox by saving your search and then delete the smart mailbox. This creates a smart mailbox but only for the specific thing you searched for. When you search for something different you still get the “Top Hits” results. I did get it to work once but when I tried it a second and third time to be sure, it did not work.

Finally...I may be missing something and I definitely do not have all of the answers. If one of these options has worked for you, please make sure you are using the search bar in Apple Mail (not in a Finder window) and upload a screenshot. After looking over the whole conversation again the answer I’m going with was made by KlytusLord, and it happens to be the third post in the conversation:

"It cannot be removed/disabled.

Confirmed via Apple support live chat, which even got escalated to a supervisor. It took 24 minutes of "chatting" with support to get the simple answer to a simple question.

It's a new feature, learn to like it.”

Enjoy some screenshots!!!

Screenshots for reference:

A screenshot with nothing changed and no current search:

A screenshot of a search with “Show most recent messages at the top” checked:

A screenshot of a search with “Show most recent messages at the top” UNchecked:

A screenshot of a search with “Allow Spotlight Suggestions in Look up” checked:

A screenshot of a search with “Allow Spotlight Suggestions in Look up” UNchecked: