Photos App – Photos App Does Not Show in Search

iosiphonephotos.app

I have an iPhone 7 and the Photos App is on my phone and it works just fine, but I have a few issues with it:

1) When I search for it in the iOS search tool, it does not show up.

2) There are photos that will not open on other devices and cannot be shared any other way. The other devices will read them as corrupt or unreadable.

I have tried restoring my phone and then restoring it from backup, and I have the exact same issues. I also had this issue in both iOS 12 and 13. My phone is currently up-to-date (As of September 26, 2019, iOS v13.1) because I have been trying to fix this issue.

Best Answer

Spotlight uses a system process to index all files on the storage, so if you have a corrupt search or the process is crashing, the only true fix is to back up the device and erase/reinstall it if it's not a setting you can toggle.

That setting would be in the settings app - navigate to Siri & Search and then below the main settings is an alphabetical list of apps.

ios settings for app search

Toggle off all the photos items and then power down the phone. Then power it up and navigate back to re-enable them.

detailed search options for Photos app on iOS 13.1

If after 30 minutes on charge, the index isn't working you'll want to prepare to erase and wipe the device.

If you are hesitant to do that (since you have to unync an Apple watch - get your health data on the iOS device - then back that up securely, then wipe and restore and then set up things like wallet, fingerprint if the restore doesn't work perfectly) you might try some other things.

  1. Reset all settings on the iOS device
  2. Consider asking Apple Care if there's anything else we missed or a known issue in your version of iOS.

If the version of iOS you're running has a bug, no amount of fiddling will fix that and you'll have to wait for a patch to apply.

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