In iOS 17, photo search was limited to basic categories like people, places, or objects. But with iOS 18, the search functionality has been greatly enhanced. In this article, I’ll share some new and cool ways to find your photos on your iPhone, making it that much easier to find exactly what you’re looking for.
1. Find multiple people
One of my favorite features in the new iOS 18 Photos app is the ability to search for multiple people. For example, if I want to see pictures of me and my friends, I can enter a name in the search bar like “sayan, pratik, mrunal,” and it will only show pictures featuring the three of us. You can also sort or filter the results to make it easier to find a specific image. See the screenshot below:
2. Find people at work
If you want to show your friends old videos of you playing games, “[Your Name] is playing and it will display all the results where you have seen that game played. The cool thing is that it will also show the timestamp of where you’re playing, so you can jump straight to that part.
There are countless other search terms you can use, such as:
- [Person Name] to eat
- [Person Name] cycling
- [Person Name] [food name]
- [Person Name] documents
3. Find the text in the image
Looking for specific text in your photo, like a menu item? Thanks to the Live Text feature on the iPhone, you can easily do that. For example, when I wanted to check the price of a burger from a restaurant’s menu photo, I just searched for “burger” and that brought up the menu photo.
Also Read: We have covered here how to extract text from images on both PC and mobile. Check it out.
4. Search photos based on location, device or image type
Did you know that every photo you take, whether from your smartphone or DSLR, stores EXIF metadata? This includes details such as focal length, ISO, image type, location and device used. If you’ve moved all your media files from Samsung Galaxy to iPhone, you can search for “Samsung” to see only photos taken with Samsung phones. Similarly, you can search by location, image type or camera type.
5. Filter by selfie, panorama or live photos
Another great way to quickly find your photos is to search for a specific type of photo. If I just want to see selfies in my photo library, I can do that easily. To further narrow the search, I can add the person’s name to the selfie search. Likewise, if I just want to see panoramas or live photos, I can find those too.
6. Utility Division
If you prefer not to search manually, just go to the Utilities section where your photos are categorized into sets like handwritten notes, pictures, QR codes, documents, duplicate photos and more.
It is from my side. With these enhanced search features in iOS 18, managing and searching your photos becomes a breeze, ensuring you can always easily find your favorite memories.
Don’t like the new iOS 18 or facing too many bugs? You can easily roll back to iOS 17 stable version without data loss. Here’s how.