Fixing Element Search

My MacOS Element Matrix client (Electron based) started getting errors when I searched. My Windows Matrix client worked just fine, so I was pretty sure it wasn’t a server issue. When I typed anything into the message search I’d get this error right underneath:

“Message search initialisation failed, check your settings for more information”

And when I clicked the “settings” link I’d see this:

Error opening the database: DatabaseUnlockError(“Invalid passphrase”)

Clicking on the “Reset” button brought a scary warning dialog (“you probably don’t need to do this”—yeah, I kinda think I do) but clicking through it didn’t actually seem to do anything.

Searching for those terms got me to a github issue. Nothing seemed resolved but I found a message in the middle that helped me fix the problem.

Here’s what I did:

1. Close the app
2. cd ~/Library/Application Support/Riot. I had to poke around till I found that. There was also a ~/Library/Application Support/Element but it seemed older and out of date, oddly.
3. tar cjf EventStore-bad-2023-06-18.tar.bzr EventStore. This made a backup copy of the EventStore directory just in case I needed it (I didn’t).
4. rm -rf EventStore. Kill it with fire.
5. Restart the app

Viola! Working search again!