There’s a new way of searching messages in iOS 17 that makes it really easy to find the exact content, or message, or attachment that you want.

If I jump into the Messages app and then press the search bar at the top, I want to find a picture of a cat that my fiancée Sapphy sent.

So I’m going to search for Sapphy first of all, and then it will show the contacts that match that name.

I’ll tap on to Sapphy here – you can see at the top in the search bar that that’s now become a gray box.

That means it’s a search filter – so the next thing you type in will be a second filter.

Now, I could type in photo here but actually it suggests that for me just below.

If I tap on the photo it will now only show messages from the Sapphy where she has sent a photo.

But I want to narrow down one more time – so I’m going to tap into the top search bar and type in ‘Cat’.

And just like that I’ve now got all the photos of cats that my fiancée Sapphy has sent me (and trust me there are a lot!).

Anyway, I found the one that I want – it’s this awesome picture of Pudding having a big stretch in the garden!

And if I come out of the picture it was actually sent in a group chat between myself, my fiancée and my mum – which means it’s automatically searched all the messages, not just the ones between myself and Sapphy.

It’s a really powerful Search tool built right into Messages – and that’s another example of how iOS 17 makes your phone better than ever before.