Photos

 

For a few years now the Photos App has been able to work out key objects and locations from your pictures.

But now it can search text as well.

You can browse Photos by searching for keywords.

Here’s how it works.

First of all I’m going to bring up Spotlight search by just pulling down on my Home Screen icons slightly.

From here I can type in anything I like and it will search my entire phone – now including the content of Photos as well.

I’m just going to search for ‘chocolate’ because I’m feeling a bit hungry at the moment.

And then as well as a few different films and things that come up, if you scroll down, you should see Photos.

Now at the moment these are photographs of chocolate because the machine learning in my phone has worked out which pictures contain that particular item – but if I tap Show More it will then give me two distinct sections.

Text Found in Photos and just Photos.

Amazingly in the time it’s taken to do that search, iOS has scanned my entire photo library and has found all these pictures with the word chocolate in there somewhere.

Let’s have a look!

As you can see it’s found a bottle of gin which, for some reason, is chocolate Churro flavour.

Not sure I fancy that.

It’s found some 7-inch vinyl singles including the song Chocolate by The 1975.

And it’s even amazingly found the words Hot Chocolate on a menu in the background of a photo of a very nice breakfast I had a while ago.

And the great thing is that this recognises handwritten text as well – as you can see in these labels for a science experiment I did for school.

In fact we can even browse more Photos that have been found by pressing Show More and then you can tap on the icon in the bottom corner to jump to that photo in the Photos app.

It’s really simple but it’s a really, really handy feature.

I hope you found this video helpful – if so please do subscribe to my YouTube Channel down below where there are loads more #QuickTips for iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 waiting for you there.

I’ll see you next time!

 

A clever new feature in the Photos app will now let you use Siri Knowledge to get more information about what’s in your Photos.

Here’s how it works…

When you open up a photo in the Photos app there is a little information button at the bottom that looks like an ‘I’ in a circle.

Now, if there are some little stars on that icon that means that Siri has found something in your picture that it can give you extra information about.

So I’ve got a picture here of Cologne Cathedral and if I press that ‘I’ button that now has stars on it you’ll get an information tab sliding up with more details about that photo as well as useful information like when and where the picture was taken.

There’s now a section at the top called Look Up and if I tap on there it will look up the landmark in that photo.

And there, just like that, I can get loads more information on Cologne Cathedral.

I could get directions there, I could find similar pictures, or I could use a Wikipedia article to learn more about the Cathedral and its origins.

If I come off there and go onto a new picture and press the ‘I’ again I’ll get a different set of results.

So here i’ve got a nice photo of a forest that I explored just outside of London and if I press that ‘I’ with a little star button on it I can then do a look up on the plants in this picture.

This works great if you’ve got an unknown plant in your garden or if you’re out on a walk and you want to identify something.

But here it’s telling me these are Pine trees and the woods are called Pinewood so that does make sense.

This feature also works for pets like dogs and cats.

So I’ve got a lovely photo here of my Mum’s puppy Poppy and if I tap on that ‘I’ button and do a look up on the pet you’ll see a little paw print on Poppy’s nose.

If I tap on that it will give me information about what breed of dog Siri thinks that might be and it is indeed a Labrador so it’s got it right for me this time.

This works on quite a few different objects in your Photos whether it be a plant, or an animal, a landmark, a book, or even a piece of artwork that you photographed and of course yes it works on iPad too.

So on the iPad I’ve got the information button in the top right corner but when I tap on there I get the same information sheet coming up and just like on the iPhone it will identify all of those things.

So I can get more information about my Bird of Paradise plant straight from within the Photos app.

It’s quite good fun digging down multiple layers to find more information and related pictures about the one that you’ve captured.

That’s it for this #QuickTip but there are loads more iOS and iPadOS 15 ones on my channel so please click the name below and Subscribe so you won’t miss any tips in the future.