From your description, you're searching text at a rate of 13MB per second, looking for a random piece of text. That is pretty good for a raw search. But improvement is probably possible if the indexing is working properly...

You could try rebuilding your database. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-database

Rebuilding will recreate the indexes. You have a lot of data, so be patient for the rebuild to finish.

I would suggest timing a search before rebuilding, and the same search after rebuilding.

If you get an improvement in search times, you can close this query, or if not, continue looking for answers.

Thank you for using Thunderbird.

Thanks, that looks like it. The index was 460M, I deleted it and now it's re-indexing.

I also updated to T68 and it feels slightly faster. What struck me as odd - when using "global search" (the search field in the upper-top bar, not the one from message list) the search is almost instant (and it uses, what seems like HTML preview).

Have you compacted your folders recently to remove all hidden marked as deleted emails? This would mean your folders and possibly also the Global database is larger than necessary.

Three folders usually get more deleting than others, so start with them. Right click on Inbox folder and select 'Compact'. Right click on Junk folder and select 'Compact'. Right click on Drafts folder and select 'Compact'.

460M index is not all that big. But what are the specs of your machine?

@Toad-Hall I completely removed the database (as per previous suggestion)

@Wayne Mery ``` MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013) 2,4 GHz Intel Core i7 16G ram ``` so, despite being ancient, not that bad ;)