Sidebar Sidebar
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

Morac

Morac

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Dec 30, 2009
2,329
693
I transferred my data from my old phone to an iPhone 15 Pro Max yesterday. As far as I can tell my messages transferred over, but I can’t search for anything prior to about February 2022. There are messages going back many years prior to that which I can find via search on my iPad and Mac. Same thing with photos and videos and the like.

The message app doesn’t say it’s indexing so I think it’s finished.

Is there a way to get Messages to re-index the messages so search works?
 
now i see it said:
leave the iPhone plugged in overnight - as much as thats not so great for the battery. iOS will index the whole device.
Click to expand...

I had it plugged in for 8 hours last night, plus several hours yesterday. It had only indexed 16 months worth of messages (out of about 8 years).
 
You’re not the only one. My partner noticed this today as well. I checked mine, same thing. Ours won’t go beyond a few months of 2023. It’s odd
 
I’m not positive, but it seems like there are “non-iCloud” messages in iMessage somehow.

I noticed some photos and videos are being deleted off the device in iMessage and these are only newer in newer messages. Photos and videos in old messages aren’t removed off the device.

I tried toggling Messages in iCloud off and on, but that just made messages take up more storage. I also tried toggling off the Siri and search settings, restarting the phone and turning them back on, but that did nothing. I could still only find messages newer than Feb 9, 2022 and now iMessage is using 650 MB of storage and the phone is suggesting I set it up to delete old messages.
 
I’m having the same issue. My messages go all the way back to 2012, but my search results only go back one month, to August 2023. Even though if I manually look, I can clearly see them.

What gives??
 
I’m curious did anyone else having this problem do an iCloud backup and restore and direct phone to phone transfer. I did a phone to phone and I wonder if that’s what screwed it up.
 
As far as images go, click the contact photo at the top and then scroll down and click download iCloud images.. I think this will also redownload all the text messages in the group as well. I have almost 500gigs of data still to download so… I have a while before it finishes indexes..

Just checked. Mines has indexed to 2019 so far.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0047.jpeg
    IMG_0047.jpeg
    77.4 KB · Views: 227
  • Like
Reactions: QuarterSwede
gigapocket1 said:
As far as images go, click the contact photo at the top and then scroll down and click download iCloud images.. I think this will also redownload all the text messages in the group as well. I have almost 500gigs of data still to download so… I have a while before it finishes indexes..

Just checked. Mines has indexed to 2019 so far.
Click to expand...

Which contact photo? I don’t see any in the Message app. The only one I found is in the 3 dot menu and that doesn’t mention anything about iCloud.

If you mean the contact photo in a conversation I’m not seeing anything about iCloud in there either.

As far as I can tell it’s not doing any imaging. I have about 650 MB of messages in iCloud and that’s how much storage is being used on my phone. The phone is not showing it is indexing in the search screen.
 
Morac said:
I’m curious did anyone else having this problem do an iCloud backup and restore and direct phone to phone transfer. I did a phone to phone and I wonder if that’s what screwed it up.
Click to expand...
I initiated the transfer via phone-to-phone, but chose the option to download via iCloud.
 
DDustiNN said:
I initiated the transfer via phone-to-phone, but chose the option to download via iCloud.
Click to expand...

I was thinking of wiping the phone and restoring from iCloud, but if you restored and iCloud backup and have the same issue I won’t bother.

It does take longer to download Messages from iCloud, so theoretically your phone may still be downloading and indexing which you should be able to tell by going to search as it will say results may not be complete until indexing finishes.

In my case since I copied phone to phone all my messages were already there. It also doesn’t say anything about indexing when I check search.
 
Morac said:
I was thinking of wiping the phone and restoring from iCloud, but if you restored and iCloud backup and have the same issue I won’t bother.

It does take longer to download Messages from iCloud, so theoretically your phone may still be downloading and indexing which you should be able to tell by going to search as it will say results may not be complete until indexing finishes.

In my case since I copied phone to phone all my messages were already there. It also doesn’t say anything about indexing when I check search.
Click to expand...
Nope it doesn’t say anything about indexing anywhere. I’m also not using iCloud messages. It’s all on-device, and I’ve been restoring from backup since 2012 with zero issues until this one.
 
What’s really bizarre is the storage for Messages on my phone is about 100 MB larger than the storage for messages in iCloud (I use iCloud messages). Though when I check the size in iCloud, the Top Conversations is about 200 MB smaller than the iCloud storage size.

On my iPad the iCloud message and top storage sizes are nearly identical and the local storage is half that.

It’s like there extra garbage in Messages on my iPhone.
 
Morac said:
What’s really bizarre is the storage for Messages on my phone is about 100 MB larger than the storage for messages in iCloud (I use iCloud messages). Though when I check the size in iCloud, the Top Conversations is about 200 MB smaller than the iCloud storage size.

On my iPad the iCloud message and top storage sizes are nearly identical and the local storage is half that.

It’s like there extra garbage in Messages on my iPhone.
Click to expand...
My storage is still showing the full size, and all of the messages are there if I manually scroll through them. But if I click on the contact photo and then look at the photos section, they only go back to last month. Even though they are all there if I scroll back within the message. And same goes for the search: even though all of the messages are there, the search results don’t display anything older than August 25th.

I haven’t tried turning on iCloud messages yet, as I’m not sure if that will mess anything up.
 
Also, I still have my old phone (13 Pro) so I just checked on there, and the search feature works perfectly fine. So it’s not an iOS update issue or anything. Really not sure what’s going on. I’m tempted to erase the phone and try again, but that seems like such a pain, haha.
 
I am having the exact same issue. I also did the phone-to-phone transfer on Friday and I cannot search conversations for any messages for older than 2023. If I search on my old phone (also running the latest OS), all the results come up but not on the 15 Pro. I was just on the phone with Apple and they said it is an ongoing issue that a lot of people are having.
 
Last edited:
I set up my iPhone 15 Pro via iCloud backup and my messages are supposed to be loaded back fro Messages in iCloud. Thus far, only messages from the past 2-3 months are downloaded – when I scroll back, it won't scroll past mid July. Search is also only returning results for the past few months.

My old iPhone 14 Pro, which I upgraded to iOS 17 since dev beta 3, has all the messages and search works just fine.

Update: It appears that the older messages are now downloaded, although they remain unsearchable.
 
Last edited:
Cotypubby said:
I am having the exact same issue. I also did the phone-to-phone transfer on Friday and I cannot search conversations for any messages for older than 2023. If I search on my old phone (also running the latest OS), all the results come up but not on the 15 Pro. I was just on the phone with Apple and they said it is an ongoing issue that a lot of people are having.
Click to expand...
So they weren’t able to help you with a fix of any kind?
 
DDustiNN said:
So they weren’t able to help you with a fix of any kind?
Click to expand...
Nope. First I went to the Apple Store with no luck, then I called Apple support and they were able to view my screen while I showed the issue. After a while the tech spoke with someone higher up who said it was a known issue that would have to be fixed by an update.
 
Cotypubby said:
Nope. First I went to the Apple Store with no luck, then I called Apple support and they were able to view my screen while I showed the issue. After a while the tech spoke with someone higher up who said it was a known issue that would have to be fixed by an update.
Click to expand...

If they know about the issue hopefully they can fix it. When I called them on Saturday they weren’t aware of any problems and sent me links to useless articles.

In my case I may have made things worse by toggling iCloud messages off and on as now Messages on my phone is using more space than message in the cloud. I have 650 MB of messages in iCloud and my phone’s message storage is at 850 MB and it keeps increasing if I scroll back through messages.

What’s weird is it did offload some photos, but only ones from 2023. All the old ones are still visible in messages, but not when I look in the storage. Basically the app says it’s using 850 MB, but if I add up the space from the categories it only adds up to about 50 MB. It’s like Messages is keeping both a downloaded and iCloud cached version of the same attachments. I’ve deleted several large attachments and the storage went up.

Does anyone know what happens if you turn off iCloud messages and then delete all the messages and turn it back on? Does it download the cloud messages or delete the messages from iCloud?
 
I have the same issue. I believe it is b/c of the new iOs 17.0.2 update. It was working fine on my new iPhone 15 Pro w/iOS 17.0.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back