Apple Finally Got Their Shit Together And Made A Search Function That Allows You To Search INDIVIDUAL Text Message Threads For Important Parts Of The Conversation

Last month I got so frustrated after looking for an idea I sent to my music production partner from a few months prior in our text conversation, not being able to, and wanting to smash my phone, I did what any adult does in 2023 and tweeted out my anger. Directed at Apple of course. 

Granted, I am very stupid about very many things. But the number of responses I received on this telling me I was even dumber that I previously thought was staggering. Not going to lie, I had to google if I had in fact been doing it wrong all these years, and if there was a function I was just oblivious about on iPhone. 

Just when I thought I was losing my mind, Nate came to back me up and assure me I was not. That he has the same annoying issue. I wasn't crazy.

The issue is this: if you are a text hoarder, save all your conversations, and don't delete anything you feel is important or you might need later, and then you try to go back and find that important tid bit at a later date, (on an iPhone), it's basically impossible.

We're talking needle in a haystack situation.

Yes you can do a search at the top of your text messages or a word or term, and apple will source all the conversations with all the people or threads where that word or term is mentioned, but if you click on a particular convo, it will only bring you to the last time it appeared. If you are looking for something generic, or you use or type often, a name, a place, dates, etc. you are fucked.

For example, say you're looking for an address someone sent you 8 months ago. You can type "address" into the text search and it will bring up every time the word "address" has been texted over the last 8 months. Nightmare.

As many, MANY snickering Android users were all too quick to point out, this has been a feature of their bootleg cell phones for years now.

As evidenced by one of the many tutorials I pulled up to review 

Now, if you are a sane person, and purge your texts regularly, and keep your inbox tidy, I assume searching for things you sent, or somebody sent you recently isn't difficult at all. 

But if you have stuff from a year or more ago on there, you are literally scrolling back, reliving the past, for hours trying to find what you're looking for. And don't even get me started on if you forget to put your phone in airplane mode and that person texts you while you're scrolling. BOOM. All the way back to the bottom and you have to start all over again. 

It's a nightmare. 

I don't think it's a lot to ask Tim Cook and the boys over in Cupertino to take their nifty little CTRL + F search/find function and incorporate it somehow into the iPhone spotlight search bar. So if you type something in, it brings up each and every instance it appears in, in the results field. From what I've been told android does this. No reason apple can't make it happen.

P.S - As I was typing this blog this morning apparently Apple got the memo and is deploying this feature soon.

Dexerto - Among other things, Apple has revealed updates to Airdrop, autocorrect, and messages, as well as new apps coming through the update.

One of those is the new Journal app, giving Apple fans a native app for keeping track of their day with dated posts and notifications to remind them to write for the day.

Another long-rumored feature coming in iOS 17 is Standby, which gives users the ability to turn their iPhone into a smart device with various widgets to track time, live activities, and more.

Still gonna publish this blog because I'm pretty sure I am to thank for this.