The Search tool in Photos for iOS 18 is a lot more powerful and easier to use than it’s ever been before, which means you can browse your vast library of images and find the exact picture you need really quickly. To test it out, I want to find a picture I took of Coldplay at Wembley Stadium a couple of years ago. So, I’m simply going to tap onto Search, and I’m going to start by searching for London. You can see London shows up as a place, and tapping on that will find any photos taken at that location. Then, I’m going to type in the word “concert”, and the Photos app is now smart enough to know exactly what I mean. You’ll see on that list of suggestions a little ticket icon—whatever word you’ve chosen, if there’s an icon that links to it, that means it’s a category that Photos can search for. Tapping on that will now show me all the pictures I’ve taken at a concert in London.

There are still quite a few photos though, but I know this concert was at Wembley Stadium, so I’m going to type in “Wembley” as well, and it will find that as a location. Again, I can tap onto that. Now, you may notice as I’ve been doing this, I’ve not typed in the word “Coldplay” at any point. But at the top of that search, it’s automatically found albums and memories of that exact gig for me, and it knows it was a Coldplay gig because of an event in my calendar at the time. I can then go through and browse the photos, and I can find the exact picture I wanted—this one here with all the confetti.

But the other thing that I really like about Photos and the search in iOS 18 is that you don’t have to search word by word like I’ve just done there—you can just talk normally. You can search using natural language—you can type in what you want to find, essentially. So, for example, if I literally type in “photos of Jacob in London”, look what comes up. It’s taken that text, figured out what I want, and found me the pictures that match. That means browsing a large library of content is easier than ever before.

Now, let’s be honest—typing in a phrase into Photos and getting the pictures you want is hardly earth-shattering news, but the fact that you can do this makes your iPhone that much easier and more enjoyable to use. There are loads more things that iOS 18 does that open up whole new possibilities on your device. Check out my channel down below, where there are loads more videos explaining all the new features. Or if you want to, I’ve written an ebook this year called 100 QuickTips for iOS 18. Please feel free to check that out and see what your phone can do now you’ve updated.