TL;DR: A ChatGPT desktop plugin now reads your iMessages by meaning, not exact wording. Describe a text vaguely and it still finds the one a keyword search would miss.
Somebody texts you an address in March, and you need it back in August with zero memory of who sent it. That’s the wall a Redditor named u/Professional-Rest138 hit, and the fix this original poster found is almost stupidly simple.
Apple’s built-in Messages search only matches literal text. Type “coffee shop” and it finds “coffee shop,” nothing looser. The plugin this contributor is using works differently. It reads for meaning, so you describe a text the way you’d describe it to a friend, and it still turns up.
The Prompt That Nails It First Try
Here’s the exact prompt the original poster ran, word for word:
Somebody texted me an address for a place we were meeting, I think in the last two months, but I cannot remember who. Find it and tell me who sent it and when.
It worked on the first attempt. No keyword, no sender name, just a description of the situation. The model located the message, named who sent it, and gave the date.
What makes this work is specificity without literal detail. The prompt states the shape of what to find (an address), a rough time boundary (two months), and the exact output wanted (who and when). Semantic search fills in everything a keyword search would have needed spelled out.
Two More Built The Same Way
The poster shared two variations that follow the same pattern: describe the category, set the boundary, ask for a structured answer.
Find every discount code, booking reference, confirmation number and tracking link anyone has ever texted me. List them with the company, the code, and the date. Flag anything that looks expired.
This one turns a phone into a receipts drawer. Every promo code a company ever texted, all in one list, sorted and flagged for what’s already dead.
Find every message between me and [name] about [topic], across the whole history. Put them in order and tell me what we actually agreed and what was left open.
This is the one worth bookmarking. Anyone who has argued about “that’s not what we agreed” now has a way to pull the full thread, in order, in about ten seconds.
The One Nobody Wants To Run, But Should
There’s a fourth prompt, and this one is uncomfortable on purpose:
Go through my messages and find every conversation where the other person sent the last message and I never replied. List them oldest first, with who it was, how long ago, and one line on what they said. Do not reply to any of them yet.
It surfaces every thread you ghosted, oldest first. Not fun to read. Genuinely useful to see gathered in one list instead of scattered across months of unread bubbles.
One habit worth copying: add “do not reply to anything, just show me” to the end of any of these prompts. It costs nothing to type, and it means a misread instruction can’t turn into a message you never meant to send.
Use Cases
- 📍 Recovering addresses and meeting details buried in old threads
- 🎟️ Pulling every discount code and tracking link into one list
- 🤝 Settling “what did we actually agree on” disputes with the full thread, in order
Prompt of the Day
Find every message between me and [name] about [topic], across the whole history. Put them in order and tell me what we actually agreed and what was left open.
Swap in a name and a topic, and you’ve got a settled argument in the time it takes to read the reply.
One catch before you get too excited: this only runs through a plugin on the ChatGPT desktop app, on Apple silicon Macs. You enable it in Settings, then approve Full Disk Access when macOS asks for it. There’s no iPhone version yet, which is the version most people actually want. Stuck on a phone? The drafting prompts still work if you copy a thread over and paste it in by hand.
The original poster keeps a running doc of everyday prompts like these, shared for anyone who wants a copy. Worth a look if this is the kind of trick you’d reach for weekly instead of once. Check the full Reddit thread for the rest of the setup steps and what other readers changed to make it work for them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What do I need to use this?
You’ll need a Mac with Apple silicon and the desktop Messages app. Enable it in Sidebar → Plugins, and macOS will ask for Full Disk Access. The free plan works for everything shown here.
Q: Why does it need Full Disk Access?
It needs to search your entire message history across all conversations. You’re trading privacy access for powerful search, totally reasonable if you trust the source, but worth knowing what you’re granting.
Q: What about iPhone?
There’s no iPhone version yet, which is exactly what everyone wants but can’t have (the author even called this out). Until then, you can copy message threads from your phone and paste them into Claude to use the same prompts, just not the full-history search.
Q: Is this free?
Yep, the free plan covers all of it.
Q: What if I can’t install the plugin?
The prompts work just fine without it. Copy a thread and paste it into Claude or ChatGPT, and you’ll get the semantic search, just not across your whole message history at once.
you can now search your texts by describing the thing badly instead of remembering the exact words. found an address someone sent me months ago without knowing who sent it
by u/Professional-Rest138 in ChatGPTPromptGenius