Searching Conversations

In this video, we’re going to take a look at the new search options we have in the Messages app on the Mac. Apple revised or changed how search works in the Messages app would macOS Big Sur. Let’s see what is new with search in the Messages app. Let’s go to my Mac.

Let’s go and open up my Messages app. Now the search bar is still located above all of your conversations here. You’re going to see I have search at the top. So when you look at it, it doesn’t really look that much different. But when you search, what it’s going to do now is to categorize your results.

Let’s go and click in here and see what I mean. When I click on this, the first thing it does is it brings all my conversations in line here. In addition to that, you’re going to see I have all of my photos here. So we can already see it’s breaking it down into categories.

To search, all I have to do is just start typing in here. So let’s go with lunch. I know there was a message about lunch. From here, I can see all of my conversations. All of these conversations here have the word lunch in them. You’re going to see it says lunch in bold. So it’s highlighting what I am searching for. If I want to see more, what I do is I click on Show More, and now I can see all of my messages.

Let’s go and search for reminders. I know one of my conversations here had a link for reminders, the Reminders app. So I type in here reminders, and now we can see we have two messages that have a link to my Reminders app. I just click on it to view any one of them, and now I can see that link to my Reminders app.

So that’s the new search we have in the Messages app on the Mac. Basically, what we have with the search is more details in the results. I can see any images. The messages app will highlight the search term that I’m looking for. If I’m looking for a specific link, for let’s say the reminders app, I’m going to be able to see those links.

So that’s the new search in the Messages app on the Mac.