Since upgrading to iOS 18 on my iPhone 14, when searching in Mail, the results are not returning in date order. Emails from 2021 onwards are showing first and then I have to scroll to find the most recent emails, which are then showing in ascending order. Any ideas?
iPhone 13, iOS 18
Is there a fix for this? Incredibly frustrating. When I search for a keyword, I get the most recent results at the top for a split second, but then older emails appear. I then have to scroll (sometimes quite far) down to the “Some results may not appear” message. Then under “server results” I see the most recent results. So how do I get the server results to appear at the top?
The latest iOS update, as well as the other suggestions made in this thread do not work if there are years worth on messages in the search results. Spoke with Apple support yet again and still no fix. If you are having this problem, call them so they recognize that many people are frustrated by this and it moves up on their priority list.
I keep hoping every time I get an upgrade the problem will stop. Nope!
it doesn’t matter if it is search by subject or by a name.
At first the sort is correct then it flips itself. Not even always older to newest. Sometimes just mixed up.
APPLE -PLEASE FIX
This is extremely frustrating.
I have multiple mailboxes and it makes searching for a specific email using a keyword really difficult. This affects greatly the effectiveness of my workflow.
The updates should normally make the system work more efficiently and not the other way around.
This has been a known problem with the apple users and I don’t understand why apple is still not reacting?
Nope, if you search someone where there are yrs of old emails, those suggestions (list and most recent) don’t work. The Apple support person supposedly working on this with me has gone silent.
Ridiculous that this has not been fixed as it renders Mail as being completely unreliable for anything important. I haven’t looked yet but how hard would it be to move old messages into another email program like Outlook?
I have been having the same problem since installing an iOS system update December 2024. I’ve spent hours on the phone with Apple, and hours in person at a genius bar.. Every tech person appears confused as though they have never heard of this before. Are they not permitted to talk about it? That makes me nervous, and why is this only happening to some people? One tech at Apple told me to wait for the new iOS system… Butbad news upon bad news is that tonight I upgraded to 18.3.2 ….. and email search/sort STILL doesn’t work! I’ve tried deleting my mail apps and reinstalling, toggling sort buttons, handing my phone and iPad to a tech so they could try. What to do now?
apple: please pull this feature back or give us the ability to turn it off. Making us live with no email for many months is completely unfair! Give us our email back please, since no one knows how to fix it. Or give us the ability to revert back to a safe version of iOS 17 please.
This is so frustrating. But when I turned the sort by recent off/on it temporarily fixed part of the problem.
the sort by subject started to sort by recent. But searching for a name did not.
Then the next day the sort by subject was again backwards. But every time I switch it off/on it temporarily works.
Many thanks Lakerlife! Fixed my issue too.
Your suggestion worked for me.
I toggled ‘most recent message on top’ to off and back to on and it fixed it immediately . Had been unusable for weeks. Thanks to whoever suggested this
Flipping “most recent on top” off/on worked for me too. Thanks!
I THINK this might have just gotten fixed….updated to 18.4 and at least the first few searches now seem to work correctly. Hoping im right, and thanks to whatever engineer helped out!
Ever since I got my new iphone16 my emails don’t sort the way they used to.
when I search for a name or subject it defaults to the most recent which is correct. But then almost immediately it changes & goes to the oldest one first. I find myself looking at emails I sent years ago for something I actually sent a week ago. It’s a pain
I have done a bunch of searches & tried everything I can find. Obviously others are having sort issues as well.
this was not a problem till now upgraded my phone a few weeks ago.
how do I reset it so my search is the most recent emails & not the oldest?
Mail search on iPhone not sorting by date
