Hello,
Due to continued pc issues, I’ve been using my Mac a lot more as of late.
One thing I do quite a bit on my computer is email.
I have so much in there that it is often necessary for me to search for things.
As of the latest update, 26.3 which I’m currently running, I find that if I want the search feature to work properly, I must do the command, which is command+f, twice.
Is this a bug or intended feature?
Has anyone else seen this?
By KE8UPE, 23 February, 2026
Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Comments
I've seen it yes.
cmd-opt-f, no? Anyway, yeah. I dunno, I just hit it, go "oh yeah it doesn't have a text entry area", hit it again and get on with my life.
Me, I'm trying to figure out how to get it to search *all* of my mail, not just "all inboxes" and related stuff. I imported from Thunderbird on the PC, so I have a ton of mail in "import". It apparently doesn't want to search that in Mail. Spotlight searches it, so that's something.
Searching all mail
For me, I can search all mail by typing my search term and selecting "all mailboxes" in the mailboxes table.
I thought i had.
I'll give it a shot though. Maybe it's really on something else. The thing is that it kind of has two sets of things. There's "all inboxes". Under that is my ISP and GMail. Then, there's stuff like "all drafts", "all sent", and so on. Then there's "import" or whatever it's called, and all of the old mail from the PC is under that. So the thing is, I think it *is* searching "all mnboxes". It's just that there's stuff outside of that level of the table/tree/whatever it is.
@Khomus
All Inbox, the first element, is, well, all your connected / imported email accounts inboxes. The rest, drafts, sents... I believe theydon't appear when we search.
You'd think so.
But I'm pretty sure that's what's selected. If you expand it, it says it has two things under it, and those two things are my two email accounts. I'll play with it a bit just to make sure, but I'm pretty sure I leave "all mailboxes" selected in the table all the time unless I'm specifically trying to narrow things down, e.g. looking in sent mail or the imported mail.
All mailboxes above all inboxes
For me, the "All mailboxes" option is located above "All inboxes" in the table, with the other options located below.
Re: location.
Ah! I think I see the problem. I don't *have* "all mailboxes". If I collapse everything in the table, I have, from top to bottom: favorites, smart mailboxes, on my mac, ISP, Google, and an empty cell at the bottom. This is the table to the left of the messages table. Is there a setting I need to change here?
For me, it appears only after I type a search.
For me, it appears only after I type a search.
That's got it, thanks!
I probably never checked that because I assumed it was the exact same table you had to begin with. Turns out I was wrong. You learn something new every day. They *were* telling the truth!