Fixing Deleted Email SMS Messages from Spotlight Search on iPhone

Wednesday, 29 October 2014 00:00 | Written by Aaron Wang | E-mail

One of the most annoying features about Spotlight is that it saves just about everything into your search history. This can be particularly bad if your significant other gets their hands on your iPhone and you have something to hide, but it can also be a downright nuisance when you're trying to type in a few letters and get suggestions so you don't have to type the whole word.

If you have a ton of your messages saved in your Spotlight, it's nearly impossible to find what you want. So, you do what most people do — you delete them. But they're still there! So, how can you delete messages in your Spotlight search history for good?

What Doesn't Work for Your Spotlight Search History Deletion

You may have seen a tutorial on YouTube telling you how to delete your Spotlight messages permanently. Unfortunately, all this tells you is how to hide your search history. Yes, if you simply want to hide your messages in the search history, you can go to the Settings App, look for Spotlight, and then uncheck anything you don't want to save in your search history, messages including.

Then, when you go back to Spotlight, it will seem like everything is gone, right? Well, sort of. It's gone from view, but if you go back to the Settings and recheck everything you unchecked, it will all come back. In other words, it's just hidden from view.

Also, some people are claiming to have success with unchecking everything and then turning your phone off for a minute, then on for a minute, then off for a minute and then on again. If that works for you, fine. But more often than not, no real evidence of this working has been presented.

What Does Work for Deleting Spotlight Messages Permanently

If you really want to get rid of your Spotlight messages in your search history for good, simply perform the following:

1. GO TO: Settings > General > Spotlight Search > Check Messages > General

2. GO TO: Spotlight and perform a search for anything that would normally bring up your old messages.
3. GO TO: Settings > General > Spotlight Search > Uncheck Messages > General
4. GO TO: Spotlight and perform a search for anything that would normally bring up your old messages.

Repeat these steps as many times as necessary for the index to be reset. When it is reset, you will see that the Messages box is checked, but no old messages can be found when you perform a search for old messages. Repeat this process until Messages IS checked in Spotlight Search settings but no old messages are popping up. This can take a couple times or quite a few times, depending on how long it takes your iPhone to realize you want to delete the entire cache of your Spotlight search history.

When you are successful, you will only see the Search Web and Search Wikipedia suggestions on your Spotlight, since they are always there no matter what.

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