Want to learn more about a landmark, painting, animal, plant, food, or other object that you’ve snapped with your iPhone’s camera? Now you can, with an iOS 18.1 photo look-up feature called Enhanced Visual Search.
By scanning and analyzing photos, this tool can categorize and even identify certain items via a web search. Enhanced Visual Search is also available on an iPad with iPadOS 18.1 and a Mac with MacOS Sequoia 15.1.
Also: iOS 18.2 was killing my iPhone’s battery until I turned off this feature
Sounds great, right? Well, that depends. A similar feature called Visual Look Up first debuted with iOS 16, so this type of capability has been around for a couple of years. But Enhanced Visual Search is more advanced, as it shares your photos with Apple to help dig up the right details on the object. That difference has triggered privacy concerns among many people, especially since the sharing is enabled by default.
How Enhanced Visual Search works
Open a photo on your iPhone (or iPad or Mac) that contains an identifiable object. I chose a photo of the Statue of Liberty.
If the item is supported by Enhanced Visual Search, the info icon at the bottom will display a small star in the upper left area. Tap the info icon, and the search will categorize the object as a landmark, artwork, animal, plant, or something else. Tap the Look Up option under the photo, and a web search will name the item and let you select any of the search results to learn more about it.
Also: Looking to buy a new Apple device? You might want to hold off. Here’s why
But here’s the rub. To run that search, Apple needs to analyze the photo. Since there are potentially millions and millions of landmarks, animals, and other common items that could be a match, the analysis can’t be done on your device. That’s why the photos need to be shared with Apple and analyzed on its servers.
With privacy in mind, Apple has anticipated concerns over photo sharing. On a web page entitled Photos & Privacy, the company explained how Enhanced Visual Search works:
“Enhanced Visual Search in Photos allows you to search for photos using landmarks or points of interest,” the page states. “Your device privately matches places in your photos to a global index Apple maintains on our servers. We apply homomorphic encryption and differential privacy and use an OHTTP relay that hides [your] IP address. This prevents Apple from learning about the information in your photos.”
Also: I found a malicious Chrome extension on my system – here’s how and what I did next
If that’s confusing, here’s a translation of the technobabble in that explanation.
Homomorphic encryption allows a company like Apple to analyze encrypted data without having to decrypt it first. That means no one at Apple is peeking at your photos in order to match them with other items in the company’s databases.
Next, differential privacy is a method of sharing potentially confidential or sensitive information while protecting the privacy of the individual.
Finally, an OHTTP (Oblivious HTTP) relay is a type of HTTP request that shields certain information from the third-party website, something Apple also uses for its Private Relay feature.
Also: What are passkeys? How going passwordless can simplify your life in 2025
So even though the Enhanced Visual Search does share your photos with Apple, the company does its best to protect your privacy and anonymize the data as much as possible.
Personally, I wouldn’t worry too much about this. But if you do have privacy concerns and don’t feel Enhanced Visual Search is worth the risk, you can easily turn off the feature.
How to disable Enhanced Visual Search
On your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings, select Apps, and then tap Photos. Turn off the switch for Enhanced Visual Search. On a Mac, open the Photos app to your library. Click the Photos menu at the top and select Settings. In the General tab, uncheck the box for Enhanced Visual Search.