Spotlight search into iCloud Drive

[asmartkid82]

Can anyone confirm if searching for files you know you have in iCloud Drive (with the app enabled) returns results? It seems Spotlight can't see any of my files in my iCloud Drive and for me, it totally reduces Spotlight usefulness...
Even more, Spotlight seems unable to see my Pages or Numbers documents in iCloud!

 

[KALLT]

It doesn’t. I don’t think Apple indexes the iCloud Drive. Spotlight indexing is dependent upon apps. Pages and Numbers probably have not been updated yet to support this, or perhaps they have and Spotlight hasn’t finished indexing yet. The point of Spotlight is that you can search for something and open it in the corresponding app directly. iCloud Drive doesn’t do this, it’s just a repository. I recommend the app Documents 5 which now supports Spotlight.

 

[dadiduekappa]

I think it's the search inside the iCloud Drive app to be broken. If you search a file inside the app, nothing happen.

 

[dadiduekappa]

It doesn’t. I don’t think Apple indexes the iCloud Drive. Spotlight indexing is dependent upon apps. Pages and Numbers probably have not been updated yet to support this, or perhaps they have and Spotlight hasn’t finished indexing yet. The point of Spotlight is that you can search for something and open it in the corresponding app directly. iCloud Drive doesn’t do this, it’s just a repository. I recommend the app Documents 5 which now supports Spotlight.

In OSX it works. I think it's iOS iCloud App bug.

 

[KALLT]

I think it's the search inside the iCloud Drive app to be broken. If you search a file inside the app, nothing happen.

Search within iCloud Drive works for me on iOS 9.1, so it could be a bug in iOS 9. However, iCloud Drive won’t appear in Spotlight on 9.1 either.

 

[asmartkid82]

I've been reading more into how Spotlight works and your answer seems just right, it is totally an app-oriented search. Pages and Numbers doesn't seem updated to iOS9 yet...
On the other side, search inside iCloud Drive results are totally erratic...

It doesn’t. I don’t think Apple indexes the iCloud Drive. Spotlight indexing is dependent upon apps. Pages and Numbers probably have not been updated yet to support this, or perhaps they have and Spotlight hasn’t finished indexing yet. The point of Spotlight is that you can search for something and open it in the corresponding app directly. iCloud Drive doesn’t do this, it’s just a repository. I recommend the app Documents 5 which now supports Spotlight.

 

[KALLT]

I've been reading more into how Spotlight works and your answer seems just right, it is totally an app-oriented search. Pages and Numbers doesn't seem updated to iOS9 yet...
On the other side, search inside iCloud Drive results are totally erratic...

iCloud Drive is rubbish anyway. The only reason why they offer this iCloud Drive ‘app’ now is due to demand. They are not committed to create a good document manager. iCloud Drive remains just a viewer and document picker, nothing more, nothing less.

 

[philipyoungg]

I remember spotlight show results of my number file from previous beta (iPad 3 iOS 9 beta 2 / 3), but the functionality dissapears now.

Sad.

 

[stooovie]

Yep, search returned results from iCloud Drive in previous betas but the wouldn't open in their respective apps. Doesn't work at all in 9.0 or 9.1 betas.

 

[RedElectro]

I've been searching all over the internet for an explanation to this as I thought I must be doing something wrong. I cannot search for any files on iCloud drive, nor do they show up in 'Recent Places' in the Open/Save Document Dialogue boxes. Yet the same will work fine for files saved on DropBox (via similar app).

It seems unforgivable that customers paying for what is essentially a premium service (this isn't cheap) - do not get the basic functionality that is offered by their competitors. This can't be acceptable surely?

 

[myname70]

Search within iCloud Drive works for me on iOS 9.1, so it could be a bug in iOS 9. However, iCloud Drive won’t appear in Spotlight on 9.1 either.

Did you try to search files inside iCloud's folders and subfolders that you manually have created ? And manually add files inside them? Let's say - you created folder - Test, and put inside file report.pdf and present.xls. Can you search and find them ?