Solved: Apple Photos Search/Indexing Not Working (iPad/iPhone)

by Felix Wong | 23 Nov 2024

Apple Photos is a fantastic tool for managing and searching your photo library. A couple of years ago, I made the leap from a traditional folder-and-filename archival system in Microsoft Windows/OneDrive to Apple Photos. It was a massive undertaking that involved writing Python scripts to add and correct metadata and captions before importing my entire library of >60,000 photos into Photos/iCloud. (Stay tuned for a future blog post about that!)

That effort was absolutely worth it, both for photo management and discovery. With Apple Photos, I can quickly and easily find photos—right on my iPhone or iPad—using its powerful search feature. Whether I’m searching for a person, place, date, object (car, table, even a toilet), text in an image, a keyword in a caption, or a combination of these, I can usually locate the right image within seconds. It’s especially gratifying to do this during a face-to-face conversation without keeping the other person waiting.

But what happens when Apple Photos search isn’t working as it should?

The Problem

If you’re here, you’ve probably run into one of these frustrating issues:

1. “No Results” error: You search for something you know is in your library, but Apple Photos tells you, “There were no results. Try a new search.”

   

2. You see partial results, but at the bottom of Apple Photos, there’s a note that says, “Some results may not appear.” When you click on the information icon to the right of that, it says, “Photos organises photos and videos when [device] is locked and connected to Wi-Fi.”

When This Might Happen

I first experienced these issues after updating to iOS and iPadOS 18.1.0. Everything had been working perfectly for years until the update, and suddenly, my photo library wasn’t indexed. The same thing happened again with the 18.1.1 update.

This isn’t entirely surprising, considering Apple is overhauling how search works in Apple Photos in iOS and iPadOS 18. A much ballyhooed feature that Apple is rolling out with iOS/iPadOS 18 is “Apple Intelligence,” which will eventually enable natural-language search prompts like, “green cars in snow in December 2013.” This is a major improvement over the old system, where users had to select tags that appeared while they typed keywords to refine results step by step—for instance, dec 2013 car snow. (The old system also couldn’t search by colors.)

Unfortunately, the updates that enable Apple Intelligence’s magic seem to require complete re-indexing of the Apple Photos library.

What Is Indexing?

Indexing is the process by which Apple Photos scans your library to identify people, places, objects, text, and more. This allows you to search your library quickly and effectively. The actual indexing process (including face recognition, text recognition, and object detection) is done locally on the device, utilizing the Neural Engine on Apple’s chips for privacy and efficiency. Without indexing, search may not work as expected, or even at all.

The bad news is that there’s no instant fix for search issues. Indexing can take hours, depending on the size of your library and your internet speed. If you need to find a photo at the very instant you’ve noticed indexing issues, you’re going to have to use your eyes and fingers to sift through the library the old-fashioned way.

The good news? Your device isn’t broken, and you don’t need to resort to drastic measures like a factory reset or visiting the Apple Store. Patience and following the procedure below are all you need.

How to Fix Apple Photos Search and Indexing

Follow these steps to get Apple Photos back on track as quickly as possible:

1. (Not strictly necessary, but recommended) Check for the latest iOS/iPadOS update. Go to Settings > General > Software Update to see if an update is available. If there is, download and install it. 
2. (Probably not necessary, but a good idea) Restart your device. (Hold down the power and volume up button simultaneously for two seconds, then ‘slide to power off.’ Wait 10 seconds, then hold down the power button for two seconds to power on.) Restarting can clear up minor glitches and ensure a fresh start for background processes like indexing.
3. (Might not be necessary, but recommended) Open Apple Photos. Simply opening the app can help initialize any processes that need to run.
4. Plug in your device. Apple doesn’t warn you of this, but background processes like indexing usually won’t run if your battery charge is not at a certain level, to avoid running down your battery further. Plugging in your device ensures that indexing can proceed without interruption.
5. Make sure you are connected to Wi-Fi: Indexing requires a Wi-Fi connection because Apple Photos sometimes uses external metadata sources (e.g., location services) to improve organization. If the device detects missing metadata, it could attempt to retrieve this information over the internet. So ensure your device is connected to a stable network.
6. Lock your device. Press the power button to turn off the screen. (Or let it time-out on its own.) Indexing happens when the device is locked, as noted by Apple.
7. Leave the device alone. Give the process time to complete. How long this takes depends on the size of your library, your Wi-Fi speed, and to a lesser extent, your hardware. I strongly recommend doing this during your sleeping hours.

Note that most people will have done most or all of the above steps at some point during the day or week without even thinking about it, which is why many people haven’t noticed any indexing issues to begin with. But doing the above procedure intentionally and systematically can get Apple Photos search working again ASAP.

How Long Does Indexing Take?

In my case, I now have nearly 70,000 photos in my library and a 600 Mbps (upload/download) internet connection. Based off the background usage statistics in the Battery app, indexing may have taken 3h43m and 4h19m on my iPhone 14 Pro and fifth-generation iPad Pro 12.9, respectively. (I found it interesting that the phone with the A16 Bionic chip took less time than the tablet with a more powerful M1. The iPhone also returned a few more matches for some search terms I tested when indexing was done on both.)

Again, I strongly recommend that you leave your device plugged in and locked while you sleep (just this one time; not habitually for the sake of battery health) to ensure everything was processed. Then leave it alone and don’t worry about it. When you wake up, Apple Photos should have fully restored search capabilities.

To know everything was indexed, do a search for something you know you have lots of photos of. Not only should Apple Photos return a lot of results, but it should not say “Some photos may not appear (i)” at the bottom.

If Indexing Still Has Not Occurred

The procedure I outlined above should solve nearly everyone’s problems with getting insufficient search results in Apple Photos. 

If not, some users have reported the following “fixes” in previous years:

1. “I reset location services as some write-ups have said it may not be working properly. The Photos app and Camera are using your phone’s location via GPS to tag photos or photos. To reset Location Services. On your device, go to Settings > General > Reset and tap Reset Location & Privacy. This will reset your location settings to the factory default. After that, I did a hard reset (I think they meant a device shutdown and restart), and I could see the photos start updating in the search crazy fast.”
2. “Nothing worked for me until I reset my iPad (after making sure everything was backed up to iCloud). Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPad > Reset.” This is a drastic measure and I would not recommend doing it unless nothing else has worked for you.

Conclusion

Apple Photos is a game-changer for photo organization and retrieval—when it’s working properly. Temporary hiccups like these can be frustrating, but they’re usually easy to resolve with a bit (or a lot!) of patience and the right approach.

If you’ve experienced similar issues or have tips of your own, please let me know in the comments.