All it means is that Messages search functionality isn’t enabled. Text Messages Not Appearing in Spotlight? This will open Spotlight, complete with a search box.Įnter the phrase you want to find, hit enter, and Spotlight will then pull up EVERYTHING on your phone that relates to that phrase, including text messages.Īs I noted earlier, Spotlight is great for finding stuff on your phone, from files to downloads and media, but if you’re after specific text messages, I would use the iMessage method (method #1) as it is more focussed and it makes it easier to find what you’re looking for as you’re only dealing with text messages. To access Spotlight on iPhone, go to your home screen and drag down with one finger from the middle of the screen. iMessage will now list all of conversations that mention thanksgiving. From here, simply enter your search term in the search bar and hit enter.Įxample: say you want to search for “thanksgiving”, enter the term thanksgiving into the search bar and hit enter on your keyboard. Once you’ve done this, you’ll want to go to the main screen where all of your conversations are listed. You’ll first need to open the iMessage app.
#How to do specific word search on mac how to#
Method #1) How To Search For Specific Text Messages Inside iMessage
Let’s look at how you search for text messages with iMessage using iMessage’s built in search functionality first, as this is the easiest and most reliable method.
If you know that, you can search your entire iMessage history.Īnd there are a couple of ways to mine your text messages for information the first uses iMessage’s built in search functionality, and the second uses iOS’ native Spotlight Search. All you need to know or have is a specific “keyword” or “phrase” in mind.
Finding a specific message inside Apple’s iMessage – on either you iPhone or iPad – is actually really simple.