Is iCloud drive file content search broken?

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Is iCloud drive file content search broken?

I have some documents on my iCloud drive. I would like to be able to search for a file based upon the contents of that file.

If I line up my iphone, ipad and imac, then using finder on mac and files app on ios, I browse to the same folder on each device and enter the same search term on each device, I get completely different results.

The iMac spotlight search seems to work the best at finding files, if that file is already downloaded onto the computer. But the files app provides different results between the ipad and iphone.

Why?!

iPad, iPadOS 17

Posted on Sep 1, 2025 2:22 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 9, 2025 9:15 AM in response to steezey

It looks to me like Apple has decided, with so much concern about storage space on mobile devices, that they will not store on the device a scan of all the contents of all the files in iCloud. So a search will not include files not actually local on the device. It looks like…

Spotlight on the Mac, though, seems to keep a scan of files that have gone through it to iCloud Drive. I don't know if the Mac has a scan of files that originated elsewhere and have never been local to the Mac.

I could be the same on the mobile devices, though. Perhaps if a file had once existed locally on my iPhone, the phone would retain the scan. Hmmm

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