Messages and photos don’t finish indexing

i have the same exact issue. My messages were all indexed and perfectly searchable up until yesterday morning when seemingly the entire index was deleted and now completely unable to search for anything past a day or two. This also includes the pictures and videos (attachments) within each conversation.

The data is all there, it is just impossible to access outside of I guess scrolling back through the conversation manually.

There has been no progress made with the index since this issue arose.

This is particularly frustrating because I received a repair device in the mail in February and did a direct phone to phone transfer like normal (I'm in the Apple Upgrade Program and have been since the start so I set up a new phone every September) and had the same index issue where my messages were unsearchable for almost six weeks. I had a case from back then that was upgraded to the engineer level and I spent 20+ hours working with them providing screen recordings, running logs, etc. Ultimately, they weren't able to resolve anything and the messages finally started indexing after two weeks and the index was complete after six weeks.

I reopened the same case with Apple this morning and they say that this is a known issue for 18.5.. I recommend anyone that hasn't updated to 18.5 hold off for now.

frog2222 wrote:

This is still broken. How is there no hotfix from Apple?

It is very hard to track down the cause of something that affects a small percentage of users. And, unless the problem can 1) be identified, 2) affects a large percent of users and 3) will result in data loss (or a health/safety issue), it's unlikely that Apple will release a special update just for one issue.

This is still broken. How is there no hotfix from Apple?

Still broken on 18.6

senior advisors told me for last six weeks that 18.6 would fix it and they lied