Hmm good point, my iPhone 13 Pro is on 17.0 with no issues, but the 15 Pro is on 17.0.2 and that’s where it’s broken. I’ll update the 13 and report back.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Search can’t find old messages on new phone
- Thread starter Morac
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I was able to find one more message from someone that I couldn’t find the other day. As such it looks like it may be indexing like, but only like 1 or 2 messages every few days. At that rate it would take forever to index all messages.
Mine is still the same as far as I can tell. I’m tempted to reset and reinstall but I know it’s just gonna be a big waste of time…
same problem here. messages only show back to 15th Sept, yet on my previous phone and Mac I have years of messages in the cloud.
Let's hope for a fix....
Let's hope for a fix....
I updated my 14 Pro Max to iOS 17 beta 5 in August and the search found pretty much everything.
I updated my 14 Pro to iOS 17 beta 6 in August and had the same exact issue OP describes and it is still ongoing.
I restored my 15 Pro Max through finder and an encrypted backup of the 14 Pro Max on Friday. Having the same exact issue as OP and my 14 Pro. This is an iOS 17 issue.
I updated my 14 Pro to iOS 17 beta 6 in August and had the same exact issue OP describes and it is still ongoing.
I restored my 15 Pro Max through finder and an encrypted backup of the 14 Pro Max on Friday. Having the same exact issue as OP and my 14 Pro. This is an iOS 17 issue.
For me i can find all my messages on my iPad (17.0.1) and Mac (Sonoma), but both of those were working prior to upgrading. My 15 Pro Max was obviously not previously running iOS 16 so messages were not previously indexed.
As such it seems like if message searching was working, upgrading to iOS 17 won’t break it. For new devices, unless they are set up as new (based on a comment from someone who said that worked), message searching won’t work.
As such it seems like if message searching was working, upgrading to iOS 17 won’t break it. For new devices, unless they are set up as new (based on a comment from someone who said that worked), message searching won’t work.
I only figured this out because there was someone I messaged the exact day of which the search cutoff is occurring. There were only like 10 total messages between us over the course of a couple of days. I could find some messages from him, but not others so I had the exact day and time search stopped working.
Today 2 messages that I couldn’t find last night were searchable, but not an earlier one. All messages were from the same day. As such if it is indexing them, it’s doing so at a ridiculously slow rate.
Forgot to mention upgrading to iPadOS 17 didn’t break search in messages for me either.
Yeah my updated iPhone 13 Pro is also having no issues at all. Only my 15 Pro.
17.0.2 is where the problem is. That’s what I’m running on the new phone. Hope they release 17.0.3 asap!
I’m beginning to think there’s a problem with Messages in general in all iOS 17 devices or maybe there’s always been problems but it’s worse in iOS 17.
I went and deleted a number of recent attachments from my iPad and even though they were also deleted off my phone and Mac, they would still show up in the photos search on my phone. The only way I found to fix that was to recover them and then delete them in Messages on my phone. When I did that though the attachments came back on my iPad and Mac and stayed there after deleting them. There’s still one photo on my Mac’s photo search that has no associated message. Basically the attachment indexing is kind of screwed up.
That said I noticed there are now some photos showing up in search on my iPhone Pro 15 Max that weren’t there before and I can tap them to take me to the message (from 2016). I have no idea what is going on, but maybe it is indexing a few messages every night.
Even if that’s the case though it would be much slower than previously. Last time I restored my iPhone 12 Pro Max, it only took a couple of days to index all the messages.
I went and deleted a number of recent attachments from my iPad and even though they were also deleted off my phone and Mac, they would still show up in the photos search on my phone. The only way I found to fix that was to recover them and then delete them in Messages on my phone. When I did that though the attachments came back on my iPad and Mac and stayed there after deleting them. There’s still one photo on my Mac’s photo search that has no associated message. Basically the attachment indexing is kind of screwed up.
That said I noticed there are now some photos showing up in search on my iPhone Pro 15 Max that weren’t there before and I can tap them to take me to the message (from 2016). I have no idea what is going on, but maybe it is indexing a few messages every night.
Even if that’s the case though it would be much slower than previously. Last time I restored my iPhone 12 Pro Max, it only took a couple of days to index all the messages.
Anytime I’ve ever done a restore or updated to a major iOS, the indexing of messages never took more than a night on the charger.
Apple tweaked stuff with Messages search in iOS 17 and I’m convinced this is the cause of our issues.
17.0.2 wasn’t released today. When I got the new phone on Friday it had me immediately update to that version before doing anything else.
It’s on 17.0.1 so I guess I could update it and see if there’s an issue there.
17.0.2 was released for iPhone 15 only on Friday. It was released for everything else today.
Updated the 13 Pro to 17.0.2 and messages are still searchable back to 2012.
15 Pro still remains unsearchable.
15 Pro still remains unsearchable.
I mentioned in the other thread that I had this same issue when I migrated my iPhone 11 to my 14 Pro during last year's launch. Both were on iOS 16.1 at the time, but I could not see older messages on the 14 Pro under default view. If I searched for the name of the contact who sent them, the messages would appear.
I didn't hear much noise about it, but they quietly managed to fix the issue by iOS 16.2.
I didn't hear much noise about it, but they quietly managed to fix the issue by iOS 16.2.