{"id":36961,"date":"2026-10-29T07:39:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T14:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/?p=36961"},"modified":"2026-10-29T10:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T17:05:12","slug":"how-to-search-apple-messages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/how-to-search-apple-messages\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Search Apple Messages by Specific Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a big fan of the messaging app Telegram because of the user interface. Everything about it is better than Apple Messages. One of the things that I love about Telegram is that you can search within a conversation with a single person or a group conversation. With Apple Messages, there’s no way to select a conversation and then search within it. If you search, it searches every single message you\u2019ve ever sent to anyone.<\/p>\n

I’ve been annoyed about this for years, but just this week I started thinking about it again, and wondered if AI could find a way. I asked Siri AI for help. Her first answer was to just search all messages, and then in the left sidebar, click the person or group I wanted to search within, but that entirely missed the point.<\/p>\n

I clarified a little bit, and then Siri AI gave me the start of a solution, and I messed around until I cracked the code. Maybe all of you knew how to do this, and this article will only serve as where I’ll go to refresh my memory on how to do it, but I’m ok with that.<\/p>\n

Searching on macOS<\/h2>\n

I started with macOS so let’s start there and see if we can replicate the experience on iOS.<\/p>\n

Let’s say I want to find something in a conversation I had with my daughter Lindsay. In the search field in the upper left, if I type in Lindsay, it shows me the different conversations I’ve had with her alone or including other people. My nickname for her is Lindsay Loohoo. I can click on any one of these, but that immediately opens the conversation with her, taking me out of the search field.<\/p>\n

\"do
Not This One<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you keep reading lower, there’s a horizontal rule and then a series of greyscale options. These are called search tokens. These include \u201cMessages with: Lindsay LooHoo\u201d and messages where she’s in conversations with other people.<\/p>\n

\"Greyscale
This One in Search Tokens<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you select one of these search tokens, the person or group selected becomes a token in the search field. Now you can type in a search term, but don’t hit Enter right away. After a brief pause, you should see images and videos at the top that matched your search, followed by text messages that might be what you\u2019re looking for. I was rewarded with two photos and two videos of my grandkids around Halloween.<\/p>\n

\"Halloween
Videos and Photos to Peruse<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This also works well with named groups in Messages. We have a group called \u201cCES Squad\u201d, which is a subset of the folks we see at CES each year, and I’ll use that as an example. After entering that term, I could choose CES Squad from the grayscale list, making it into a token, then search for \u201cShowStoppers,\u201d one of the press events we attend together. Without clicking anything or hitting Enter, I could see a series of messages. Each message discovered has a right-facing chevron, indicating that you can open the conversation right at that message.<\/p>\n

\"CES
Searching within CES Squad<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In my example, the first four results were three text messages and one link provided by Dave Hamilton to ShowStoppers. Let’s say I just wanted to find any links to ShowStoppers. Turns out there\u2019s a filter to do that.<\/p>\n

First, select which conversation you want to search; in my example, CES Squad. As soon as you do that, you will see four options in a dropdown: Link, All Photos, Locations, Documents.<\/p>\n

\"Messages
Four Filter Options<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If I select Link and hit Enter right away, I\u2019ll see all links posted to this conversation. But if I don\u2019t hit Enter, I can type a search term, such as \u201cShowStoppers\u201d and then in a second or so, it will filter every message we\u2019ve had together down to only links that include ShowStoppers.<\/p>\n

\"Messages
Search of CES Squad Conversation Filtered to Links about ShowStoppers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Very cool, right? While links are useful, try filtering by Photo to see every photo you\u2019ve ever shared in the conversation (or search for specific photos). It even overlays the avatar of the person who shared each image.<\/p>\n

At the top of the grid of images, you\u2019ll notice tabs for All, Photos, and Screenshots so you can filter even further.<\/p>\n

\"CES
CES Squad Filtered to Just Photos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the tokens to filter by CES Squad and Photos, on a lark I tried typing \u201cfrom:Norbert\u201d and amazingly I was able to filter down to just images from Norbert at CES.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshots
Screenshots From Norbert in CES Squad Conversation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At this point, I was getting pretty bullish on searching in Messages. It gets a little trickier if you don’t have a named group. For example, I have a message conversation with David Roth and his lovely wife, Jennifer. If I search for David Roth, I see 4 options in the search token section. One is with David alone, one is with David, Steve, and Jennifer, one is with David and my son Kyle, and one is with David and Doreen.<\/p>\n

None of these options are for just David and Jennifer.<\/p>\n

\"David
David Roth Search<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It took me a bit to crack the code to find the conversation I wanted if it wasn’t listed as a search token. It seems that those combos you see when you start to type in a name are just a few suggested groupings, but you can put together the group you’re looking for without using one of the suggestions.<\/p>\n

The trick is to select the individual person from the search token list, making that first person a token for the search. Then start typing the second person’s name, and you’ll get an independent token for them. I typed Jennifer, selected her from the search token list, and then I was able to search for anything just the three of us chatted about.<\/p>\n

I chose Document this time, and I could see where I had shared one of my world-famous international travel diagrams, and David had shared his energy bill.<\/p>\n

\"David
David and Jennifer Conversation Filtered to Documents<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Searching Messages on iOS<\/h2>\n

Let’s take a look at the same search methods on iOS to make sure it works there too. I searched for Lindsay, and when it gave me the search token options, I chose Linzee LooHoo, and then added “halloween” as the search term, just as I did on macOS. Sadly, it did not show me the Halloween photos and videos from my daughter, and in fact found no search results at all. I tried it several times, trying to determine if I’d done something different, but it never worked for me on iOS. I tried searching for other words, and they succeeded; just not the one example I tried for this article. \u00af_(\u30c4)_\/\u00af<\/p>\n

\"Halloween
No “halloween” Search Results on iOS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I tried searching within CES squad for ShowStoppers, and this time I was rewarded with a few text messages and the link Dave sent to the event. Next to each section, there is a “See All” which would reveal all of the messages and links that match.<\/p>\n

\"ShowStoppers
Successful Search in CES Squad<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Let’s see if I can replicate searching within an unnamed group conversation on iOS. If I type in David Roth and select him from the search token list, and then I type in Jennifer, just like on macOS, I can select her in the search token list so I can add her as a second token. And now I can search for something we talked about together, like Kepler (we talk about dogs a lot), and it successfully finds discussions matching my query.<\/p>\n

\"David
Successful Search for Kepler with David and Jennifer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bottom Line<\/h2>\n

The bottom line is that I’m delighted to have cracked the code on searching in individual message conversations. Sadly, search didn’t work at all in one of my queries, but hey, we’re used to that with Apple, amirite?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a big fan of the messaging app Telegram because of the user interface. Everything about it is better than Apple Messages. One of the things that I love about Telegram is that you can search within a conversation with a single person or a group conversation. With Apple Messages, there’s no way to select […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[147],"tags":[1008,49],"class_list":["post-36961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts","tag-messages","tag-search"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/David-Jennifer-search-kepler-in-thread.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36961"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36966,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36961\/revisions\/36966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}