In iOS 15, Apple made further advancements in on-device machine learning and integrated them into the Photos app to make your iPhone more intelligent at recognizing the contents of pictures.

ios 15 visual lookup
In other words, the ‌Photos‌ app can now identify various objects, landmarks, animals, books, plants, works of art, and more in your image library, and then offer information about them that it draws from the web.

This new intelligent feature is called Visual Lookup, and the following steps show you how you can use it to get more clued up on the things you've taken pictures of with your ‌iPhone‌ through the years.

  1. Open the Photos app on your ‌iPhone‌ and select a picture with a clearly defined subject, such as a flower or animal.
  2. Check the info ("i") icon at the bottom of the screen. If it has a little star over it, tap it – this indicates there's a Visual Lookup you can examine.
  3. Tap the little icon in the center of the photo to bring up the Lookup search results.

photos
In Visual Lookup, search results consist of Siri Knowledge, similar images found on the web, and other online sources of information. For all the details on the other new ‌Photos‌ features in iOS 15, be sure to check our dedicated roundup.

Related Forum: iOS 15

Top Rated Comments

Mac Rules Avatar
25 months ago
Only available when region set to US
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
HQuest Avatar
25 months ago
Still needs work ?



Attachment Image
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
The Barron Avatar
25 months ago

Must be only in IOS 15 - just tried this is 14.6 and can not find any "i" button.
The article does say iOS 15.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Jimmy Goodwood Avatar
25 months ago
I would like this to work the other way around. Would be nice to be able to search my almost 20,000 photos with words. For instance "Red Car" might help me quickly find that old mustang picture. I suppose it would mean that Apple would use AI to search all your photos and tag them with what it thinks the content is. Now that would be useful.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MrTemple Avatar
25 months ago

Funny enough LAST NIGHT I tested googles version of this and it got my dog right. I was amazed.
Neural Nets are great at identifying things similar to what people label them. If you've got a dog that a lot of people would call a certain breed (and train it close to that), the NN will come to the same conclusion.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
andysw9 Avatar
25 months ago

I would like this to work the other way around. Would be nice to be able to search my almost 20,000 photos with words. For instance "Red Car" might help me quickly find that old mustang picture. I suppose it would mean that Apple would use AI to search all your photos and tag them with what it thinks the content is. Now that would be useful.
You already can... Photos are searchable by keyword, although it's a little basic and can't do the colour bit. I can search for 'car' and get a bunch of photos with a car or cars in it. Divided up into Moments, Categories (car, carton, car park) and Places. Also things like sun, snow, beach, tree, flower, sea, river, dog, fire - and you can use multiple keywords to narrow the search as well (eg 'dog fire' to find pics of the dog by the fire).
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

lockdown

'Lockdown' Firewall App That Lets You Block Ads and Trackers in All Apps Expands to Mac

Friday February 14, 2020 12:12 pm PST by
Lockdown, a popular open source firewall app that's designed to let users block any connection to any domain, is now available for Macs in addition to iOS devices. Launched on the iPhone back in July, Lockdown blocks ad tracking services, analytics platforms that monitor device usage, ads, and more across all apps that you use (rather than just Safari like most ad blockers). Lockdown on iOS...
Google Assistant

Google I/O 2016: Assistant, Home, Allo, Duo, Android N, and More

Wednesday May 18, 2016 11:51 am PDT by
Google hosted its annual I/O developers keynote at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California today, announcing multiple new products and services related to Android, search, messaging, home automation, and more. Google Assistant Google Assistant is described as a "conversational assistant" that builds upon Google Now based on two-way dialog. The tool can be used, for example,...