{"id":28917,"date":"2020-05-12T17:04:16","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T21:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=28917"},"modified":"2020-05-19T15:45:10","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T19:45:10","slug":"search-in-messages-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/12\/search-in-messages-app\/","title":{"rendered":"Search in Messages.app"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manuel Grabowski<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

iMessage is eight years old. Never once in its entire existence has search on macOS (it’s such a long time that it wasn’t even called macOS back then!) worked properly. It is so ridiculously bad, there’s actually a third-party app<\/a> that provides a functioning search.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

When I need to find something in my iMessages I just grab my iPhone. And let’s not forget that this option has only become viable since iOS13, before which it was just as bad on there as well.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It doesn’t work very well in iOS 13, either. Many times, I’ll type the exact text that appears in the app, and it won’t find it. So I mostly just scroll and read. A long time ago, I reverse-engineered the transcript file format for EagleFiler<\/a>, so that’s how I search older messages. Unlike in Messages, the matches are highlighted, and you can select the text.<\/p>\n\n

Update (2020-05-14): Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Second, while transcripts are named and categorized as you might expect — by chat participants and chronologically — attachments have an opaque organizational system<\/a>. Third, SMS transcripts are not stored here; they only exist locally within a SQLite database. Fourth, you cannot use Quick Look to preview a transcript; and, fifth, when you open the transcript in Messages, it may be comprised of many days of discussion and will default to the most recent message, leaving you to scroll back and manually hunt for the chat in question. And, no, you cannot use ⌘-F<\/code> in a chat preview window.<\/p>\n

The search function within Messages itself is even worse. It is inaccurate, hard to use, and somehow incomplete.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

See also: AAPL of Discord<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Update (2020-05-19): Noel Cornell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The juxtaposition of Apple allowing you to store theoretically infinite amounts of messages and providing no good way whatsoever to access\/review\/search them will never not be ponderous for me. It’s literally impossible to recognize the value of former due to latter.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Manuel Grabowski: iMessage is eight years old. Never once in its entire existence has search on macOS (it’s such a long time that it wasn’t even called macOS back then!) worked properly. It is so ridiculously bad, there’s actually a third-party app that provides a functioning search. […] When I need to find something in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2020-05-12T21:04:19Z","apple_news_api_id":"ee7fff2d-8046-464e-aa29-b49b2159cc0e","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2020-05-19T19:45:14Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAg==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A7n__LYBGRk6qKbSbIVnMDg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[595,31,1667,30,1666,141,343],"class_list":["post-28917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-eaglefiler","tag-ios","tag-ios-13","tag-mac","tag-macos-10-15","tag-messages","tag-search"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28917"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28974,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28917\/revisions\/28974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}