IOS Photos

I’ve heard that ‘Visual Lookup’ is a thing in IOS whereby you can get info on objects, landmarks, etc, in your photos. How do you access and use this feature?

Apple made some significant improvements to on-device machine learning in IOS 15 and integrated them into the Photos app. The result is that your iphone is now intelligent enough to recognise the content of your photos in a feature called Visual Lookup. Visual Lookup is smart enough to identify various objects, animals, landmarks, plants, famous art and a whole host of other stuff – but unless you know how to unlock the power of this feature then the chances are that you have missed it completely. Allow us to help you discover more about your photos using Visual Lookup. 1 Open a photo

Visual Lookup only works with certain photos and they must contain something that can link to information found on the web. Browse your photos and select one. 2 What’s that plant?

When you open a photo, look for an ‘i’ icon at the bottom to show the photo info. If this ‘i’ icon is ringed with stars then it has extra info from Visual Lookup. Tap on it. 3 Look up object

In addition to the normal photo information, like the size, focal length and aperture, there is a ‘Look Up – Plant’ option. Tap this or the icon on the image. 4 See Siri knowledge

One or more items appears in a panel in the lower half of the screen. Siri Knowledge shows info found on the web. Here is a short extract – tap to see more. 5 See more info

There may be one or multiple Siri Knowledge items. Tapping on one displays the full article. It is often something taken from Wikipedia. Pull it up to see more. 6 Have fun

You can try this on any image in your library, as long it as has something identifiable in it – like a dog for example. Tap the pawprint to discover more!