If you are using Mac, the Notes app is one of important app available from Apple. You can instantly create notes using this app. It is possible to start a note on one device and finish it on another device. Your notes will be synchronized across your Apple devices. Due to this, you can instantly access your saved notes on any of your Apple device. Usually for sync to work with different devices, you need to use same Apple ID on the all devices. If the Notes app search not working, this article will help you to fix it.

Recently I faced this problem on my MacOS Big Sur. The Notes app worked perfectly on previous versions of macOS. However, after I upgraded to MacOS big Sur, the Notes app has some issues. As you can see in the below screenshot, there are more than 400 notes and if I use the search bar to locate even a simple item, the search bar is not populating any results. No matter, if I tried with other queries, same problem persists. Without the search working, to locate something you want, you need to go through each note. It is very time consuming and really inconvenient.

Solved Mac Notes app search not working

So if you are also facing same problem on your Mac, here is how you can resolve it. It’s a very simple solution but can surely help to get rid of this issue.

Solved: Mac Notes app search not working

Please follow these steps:

1. Click on the Apple logo on top left corner of screen, and select System Preferences.

2. In the System Preferences window, click on Apple ID. If you’re on MacOS Mojave or earlier, go to iCloud section instead, as the Apple ID option is not available.

Solved Mac Notes app search not working

3. Then under apps using iCloud, uncheck the Notes option. This will remove all the notes from Notes app. Don’t worry, because they’re all saved into cloud! After few moments, check the Notes option back. All of your notes will be back.

Solved Mac Notes app search not working

Now go to Notes app and you’ll find that search is now working perfectly:

Solved Mac Notes app search not working

That’s it!

Read next: Transfer iPhone photos to Mac without Photos app.

28 Comments

Add your comment

  • GadgetGuy

    Sad to say that didn’t work for me.

  • gogombuzi

    didn’t work for me

  • Jean-Marie white

    I had discovered that solution for me a while back, but after a while, searches start to fail again. Worse: I notice that when I view a note, the search can then find content in that note. But after a while, it stops being able to find the note. There’s some weird indexing issue with Big Sur. It’s terrible. I wish Google was in charge of search here …

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Yup, I hope Apple fixes it soon!

  • Scott Kennedy

    This did not work. And search is still not working for me :(

  • Susan Anderson

    This totally worked for me. Before I tried this, I called Apple support and they had me reboot in safe mode, then reboot normally. It solved the search problem but only for a few minutes. This solved it completely. Thank you so very much.

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Glad to help Susan!

  • Karlos

    Tried it, didn’t work.
    Weird, searching for a particular piece of text finds the Note on my mobile device. When I search the same iCloud notes on my Mac, it doesn’t find the Notes found on the device – even though if I scroll the list of Notes to the specific date/time, the expected Note actually is there.

  • Nick

    Just worked for me! Thanks much

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Glad to help Nick!

  • Andrea D

    Did not work for me.

  • Chriss

    Worked for me!! Thanks!!!!

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Glad to help Chriss 😎

  • abby paris

    I upgraded to Monterey and Search doesn’t work in Stickies anymore.
    Now what?

  • Katy

    Carefull, I lost a bunch of notes in the process.

  • Roger

    All my notes are now gone. Thankfully they are on my phone an iPad, but I can’t get them back on my iMac, which is what I use all day. So thanks a ton.

  • Cathy C.

    Wow, thank you for posting such an easy to follow fix for the ‘Big Sur Apple Notes’ problem on mac. It worked perfectly! So easy, so fast and I can now search the Notes on my mac (as well as my iPhone). Thanks ❤️

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Glad to help Cathy 😎

  • Tyler

    I wish I had read all the comments before I did this.

    On my macbook, all my notes are gone. All of them. I had notes going back _years_.

    I can still see them on my iphone. However, this situation is much worse than simply having a broken search bar.

    I just checked on my phone. I have over 8,000 notes going back 9 years. That’s what I lost on my macbook following the advice of this page.

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Looks like you didn’t followed the fix completely. You need to re-enable Notes option to appear back on Mac. Your notes are *NOT* deleted by following this guide.

  • Tyler

    Hi Kapil, I appreciate that you take the time to reply to comments, and that you are gracious enough to include comments on your own site even when something has gone a bit wrong. Thank you. At the same time, I feel as if you are assuming details in saying I did not follow the fix completely given that the only information you have is my comment above. I reviewed the page and I believe I did follow the procedure, including re-checking the Notes iCloud syncing in System Preferences (which might be the important step I could have skipped by accident).

    In any case, I do have some fantastic news, which is that I was able to recover my notes by just repeating the process a couple more times. In case this information is useful to other readers, here was my experience: I went into settings, turned off the iCloud checkmark next to Notes. Then after a little bit, I checked the mark again. When I went back to the Notes app, there were no notes. I could still see the notes on my iPhone (and at iCloud.com), so they were still saved somewhere. I tried several things that didn’t work. Then I repeated this procedure (meaning, unchecking and re-checking Notes iCloud sync in System Preferences) a couple more times because why not. At first, I still did not see notes … but then, shortly after my latest attempt, the notes started appearing in Notes (there was a small wait before they began appearing again, maybe a couple minutes). I could basically see them reloading from scratch, and it took many minutes for them all to load. It appears that now all my notes have been restored, and I’m grateful to have my data back!

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Glad it was resolved 😎 Thanks for the update!

  • Mags

    Worked for me. Thanks. It would make Notes app useless not to be searchable on Mac desktop

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Glad to help Mags 😎

  • sandy

    My notes never came back :(
    So I don’t even know if it worked or not..

  • chris mortee

    I followed these instructions as shown, and now half my notes have disappeared, some of which were incredibly important documents I had created for my business. I massively regret finding this page

  • Colleen

    Hi – Have tried this now a few times… I see the notes ‘come back’ when re-checked — but still the search feature not working on the laptop — But continues to work fine on my cell. Very weird. Will keep searching.
    Thanks

  • Eric

    Did not work for me. It’s not that notes are totally unsearchable, it’s just that some notes are not found when I put in a search term that is clearly in the note.

  • Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *