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:

Thank you for pursuing this so adroitly. I’ve tried some of these that make sense. No luck. If they renamed random hits, it would at least be amusing. I’d REALLY like to be able to turn this OFF!!!

Sorry, but that is not what the original question is asking. It's not about hiding part of an email conversation, Conxion question is about the "Tops Hits" feature that appears when you search for an email using the search bar. At the top of the results of a search, mail now shows what it thinks is the top two emails that match what you're searching for. They label them "Top Hits". Rarely do they get even close to what you are search for. This appears to be a new feature of High Sierra.

This does not work. Not at all. Nobody waste your time with this.

This does not in any way permanently remove TOP HITS. Not Helpful. Misleading.

The native OSX email app has been getting worse and worse. The "top hits" recommended search options was the last straw. To get around it, preferences, viewing, use classic layout. I don't see it popping up anymore. its old school but way more efficient work flow.

Up until now I had not noticed this!

I get the Top Hits thing for some searches, but not others, and so far I have not found a pattern.

It does not seem to be a function of the number of hits, as I got some very large and some very small without the top hits.

I can't find anything in preferences that we can change, either.

Followed this article Search for emails in Mail on your Mac - Apple Support

See the screen shots .

Top hits will be created above inbox and a smart mail box will also be created .

To remove top hits , click once on smart mail box in the mail side bar or you want to delete permanently the smart mail box right click on it and delete this will delete all top hits , but mail contents of your original inbox will still remain in the apple mail application , as smart mail boxes are just clones .

I wish this was the answer, but I said that this does not work. I tried it multiple times and "Top Hits" still appeared when searching. I tried this by unchecking Show the most recent message at the top", then quitting Mail and then turning the Mail app back on and searching for an email. Then I tried it by unchecking "Show the most recent message at the top" and doing a search. Both times I got the same result. Turning off "Show the most recent message at the top" do NOT resolve the 'Top Hits' searching issue for me. I have included a screenshot of Mail before I searched as a reference for how Mail changes to show your search results. And there are screenshots of Top Hits showing with and without "Show the most recent message at the top" checked.

Mail before searching:

Searching Mail with "Show most recent message at the top" turned ON:

Searching Mail with "Show most recent message at the top" turned OFF:

It shows mail that has been previously arrived for reference , and is for the time being till the mail app is opened , once you quit the mail app it's gone .

I tried in my system both ways , by clicking on save button and created smart mail box , clicked one time on smart mail box and top hits vanished .

You can give your views at the link Product Feedback - Apple

in mail preferences > viewing > show message suggestions at the top .

See this article : Mail Viewing preferences on Mac - Apple Support

The method is already given in previous answer how to remove top hit .

Just contacted Apple Support and they confirmed this cannot be configured right now. They created/added my request as an enhancement and I also filled in the Product Feedback page for mail:

Feedback - Mail - Apple

I guess the more people ask/complain about this, the higher the likelihood we'll see a preference to hide/remove the Top Hits section.

What does this have to do with removing “top hits” when you search for an email? Top Hits is not related to smart mail boxes. It’s a search bar issue. It only shows top hits when you search.

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.

The "show most recent messages" feature in Preferences is in relation to how you view multiple emails in one conversation. It means that the latest reply or response to an email will be shown first and the associated emails will be grouped with the newest response/reply. Regrettably it does not solve the "Top Hits" frustration.

This "Top hits" is very annoying, there is something in binary: cat Mail | fgrep -a 'TopHits', but i can't find the place where option should be written by defaults write to prevent this "Top hits" feature.