Unable to search photos in Photos app on my new iPhone 16

On the screen where you can see all your photos, keep scrolling down to the bottom where you see the Customise & Reorder button. Well, do you see any text below that button (e.g. library still optimising and a percentage %) ?

If that is so, leave your iPhone plugged in overnight (I think it must be charged up to 100% for library optimisation). Perhaps searching is restored now?

emakiri wrote: i keep trying to search in the photos app on my new iphone 16,

How new is your phone? It takes quite a while for Photos to scan through all your pictures and record information to use in searches. It doesn't really start searching through your pictures when you hit "Search;" it searches through the list of things that it has scanned--much faster, but you have to wait for the scanning to be over. I remember it taking over a week, and longer, for some searches to work. This is also true for things like face recognition and object identification.

Let us know if it doesn't continues with no results for weeks…

And is your iPhone locked and connected to Wi-Fi overnight, when you are not using it? A cellular connection will not suffice.

emakiri wrote: every time i do it just says:

“No Results

Photos is analysing your library to provide accurate search results”

Actually, this is always what you get when it doesn't find your query. Perhaps the "No Results" is legitimate?

Here, Photos couldn't find any picture with WWert, for instance. It never will, of course.

What do you expect to find? Does People & Pets have some face albums? Do you hits with simple obvious searches, like your own location? How about 2024? Or "dog?"

Are there any other weird goings-on?

Have you tried a forced restart? 

Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

This is different from a simple Power Off.

When I click Search, it shows some previous search results-- does yours show that? If so, there is a "Clear" button, there-- try clearing those.

Just a guess…

Definitely try a Forced re-start. It's not really a reset, but it clears caches and other crazy stuff, like re-booting a computer. It often helps.

Are you using iCloud Photos, or how have the photos on your iPhone been transferred to your new iPhone? Are they stored locally on the iPhone, or have they been synced from a computer? Synced items are behaving differently from photos that have been saved to Photos or are stored in iCloud. If you are using the manual syncing from a computer, all bets are off.

Also, something may be preventing your iPhone from finishing the scan of your photos. It could be an old video in an incompatible format or a damaged image file. Such items are hard to track down.

Why is my iPhone no longer able to do normal things like search photos? I used to be able to search photos by location, but now, if I type "Texas" only photos with the word "Texas" appear. If I put in the word "cat" nothing appears even though close to 30 photos of cats are in my library

I don’t know why Apple even has this webpage. They never answer the question they never have answers for your problems numerous people with the same problem as me and no answers. I even spoke to Tech support on the phone and they have no answers. Unbelievable.

It should have been optimised by now, I would think. Unless... do you have any idea how many photos are in your library?