Searching through SMS/imessage is awful

[Woodcrest64]

I tried searching through some text messages to find a text a client send me a while back and iMessage only goes back a couple months or so. If its fairly recent it works... sort of.

I was able to get the message by scrolling through manually through my messages which seems to come up with 'loading' indicator on my iPhone 6s.

The other odd issue with sms/imessage is if I do find a message via searching and click on it, iMessage brings me to the most recent message, but not message that came up with the search.

I was able to do this with Android. Is there something I'm missing? Should I disable iMessage? Is iMessage loading my messages into the cloud and if I were to use plain SMS my messages they could easily be found going back months or even years?


I tried using my Macbook Pro to search but it was unable to find the message too.

 

[JonSarge3108]

I've struggled with this in the past. I'm afraid I never found (or took the time to find) a solution... I'd be interested if there is one.

 

[ZEEN0j]

Search in the messeges app has been bad since they introduced it. I don't know why they haven't fixed it yet.

 

[AZhappyjack]

Flexibits, the Fantastical people, have very good, but quite pricey solution - Chatology.

I have used the free trial version and found it to be quite good at searching text chats... but at $20, it's a bit steep.

https://flexibits.com/chatology

 

[BrianBaughn]

I'm probably lucky in this respect in that I decided to get a Google Voice number for business. The GV website is a nice record-keeper of SMS, phone logs, and voicemail.

 

[Aston441]

I'm probably lucky in this respect in that I decided to get a Google Voice number for business. The GV website is a nice record-keeper of SMS, phone logs, and voicemail.

FTW. I can find a text from a decade ago instantly with GV.