I have always found it annoying to search for anything in Apple’s Messages app. Admittedly, things have gotten better in recent years, especially as Messages allows you to use search filters now , but my biggest complaint still stands: searching in Messages can be both slow and complicated, particularly if you just want to find a specific text. If you have the same experience, I have good news: I’ve found a workaround that offers a massive improvement to Apple’s built-in search function.
The problem with searching in Messages
For most people, the easiest way to search for texts on an iPhone involves opening the Messages app, tapping the search bar near the base of the screen, and typing in what you’re looking for. You’ll receive a variety of results, but that’s the problem: It’s too much information.
When I search for a person’s name, for example, Messages in iOS 26 shows a list of four chats where the name is mentioned, followed by two chat threads, pinned chats, shared notes, links, photos, locations, and documents. This is great when I want a more in-depth search, but when I’m just looking for a specific message, these extra details just get in the way.
The fastest way to search for texts in iOS 26
That’s where our hack comes in. First, open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone, then install the Search and Open Messages shortcut. This shortcuts takes advantage of actions released in iOS 26, which allow you to look for text messages and open them in a single tap. Once the shortcut is installed, you can run it from the Shortcuts app, or add it to your iPhone’s Home Screen for easier access.
The shortcut will prompt you to type what you want to search for, and almost instantly, it’ll list all the chats containing those words. In some cases, it even highlights the exact sentence containing those words. It’ll find keywords in images you share, as well: These appears as “blank” entries in the search results, but if you tap through, you’ll see the image the search identified.
The moment you tap a result, the shortcut instantly takes you to the relevant part of the chat, and doesn’t make you scroll through hundreds of results to find the right one. This is the kind of functionality Apple needs to add directly to Messages. But, for now, this shortcut workaround will have to do.
