Why is my iPhone Search not working after iOS 18 update?

I was having the on both iPhone and iPad. I think what I did solved it but now having trouble remembering what I did. I can’t promise I’m remembering correctly, but here’s what I think I did.

Go to - Settings/Privacy and security/Location Services/System services/suggestions and search: turn the switch to off then on.

it will take a while (the more stuff you have, the longer it takes), but it will re-index your entire device. Hope I remembered it right and that it helps.

hey marcg007’s method worked! Go to - Settings - Privacy & security - Location Services - (bottom) System services - (bottom) Suggestions & Search: turn the switch to off then on. ( After I did this my spotlight was fixed on iOS 18!

I spoke with an Apple support person and together we tried a variety of solutions and one worked! Do the following: close all open apps. Then go to Settings - Apps - Reminders - Search - toggle off the two options of Show App in Search and Show Content in Search - wait a few minutes - toggle back on and the search now works properly in Reminders! I had this issue since I updated to ios18 and no update fixed it and now it works!

This actually fixed the issue for me, I restarted my phone then nothing. Then I tried this thinking this won’t work and wallah it did. Thank you.

”Settings/Privacy and security/Location Services/System services/suggestions and search: turn the switch to off then on.”

Marcg007 nailed it! Go to Settings followed by Privacy & Security. Toggle Off on Lication Services. I restarted my iPhone at this point, but you may not even need to. My text searches were all truncating to include the current month’s matches only. Now I can see all of the results. Hope this helps you guys!

Marcg007’s Fix worked for my 16 Pro that would not search Calendar.

Toggling the Suggestions & Search off and on, then exiting and doing a restart of the phone restored the Search function.

Yes, this definitely works, but I had to go into each app in settings and toggle the search on/off to get the search to come back up.

I've had this issue since iOS 18 officially launched as well. I never ran the beta and I've tried pretty much everything at this point, but spotlight search itself keeps being unable to list any apps, contacts, messages or anything else for that matter. Whenever I do restart my phone and try typing something into spotlight search it seems to work for a brief moment. The results that I get however, are totally irrelevant to what I actually typed. Adding insult to injury is the fact that the search function is completely non-functional in the Files app, or any stock Apple app for that matter. It's been a feature that I've always been massively relying on without ever encountering bugs or any sort of issues. This, along with the rest of the bugs that I've encountered so far feels like Apple actually shipped beta software, which is quite embarrassing and something that I never expected from this company.

iOS 18.0.1 running on an iPhone 13 mini with plenty of storage left.

just restarted my phone and suddenly it's working again! hopefully it gets solved for everyone soon

I had my battery replaced in my 13 mini, and restored a backup. i had the same issue ..... for 10 days, not sure if any of the suggestions (reset/turn off & on locations services / leave on power overnight etc etc) did anything or it just took that long.

I wrote into this a few days ago after installing 18.1.1. Over the course of three days, things are coming back. As of today, I can search cajendar, notes, contacts, and beginning of photos. I’m guessing 18.1.1 forced a recataloguing of everything. I’m not a pro and can’t explain it, but it’s all coming back spontaneously and spookily.

I ended up going to the Genius Bar, and they were able to fix the issue after trying many things!

Update my phone

Same here. Can’t get anything to come up on search in calendar. This has been so frustrating. I will never buy a new iPhone when it first comes out again. This 16PRo has been nothing but glitchy. Drops off wi-fi even when wi fi is on all other devices. Search doesn’t work. I keep turning it off and on hoping that will fix the issues. No luck so far. Hope a new update to iOS comes out soon.

I'm actually freaking out a little. I use the search daily for texts messages because I need to field so many texts for work. Texts that I was able to find before the update, I can't find now. I use the same words I was using before and it's only pulling up links and photos. I hope they fix this ASAP because it's going to affect work in a bad way.