What Is Visual Lookup? Definition & Guide

Q: Does Visual Lookup send my photos to Apple?

No. Visual Lookup uses on-device machine learning to identify objects in your photos. The recognition happens entirely on your iPhone using the Neural Engine. Your photos are not uploaded to Apple's servers for analysis, maintaining your privacy.

Q: What can Visual Lookup identify?

Visual Lookup can identify plants and flowers, dog and cat breeds, birds, insects, spiders, fish, landmarks and points of interest, artwork and sculptures, books, and food items including recipes. In iOS 17 and later, it can also identify car models, laundry care symbols, and dashboard warning lights.

By Jack Smith, iOS Developer at DB Labs · Updated March 8, 2026

Visual Lookup is an iPhone feature that uses on-device machine learning to identify objects in your photos, including plants, animals, landmarks, artwork, and food. When Visual Lookup recognizes something, it provides relevant information without you needing to search manually. It processes everything on-device, so your photos are never sent to Apple.

How Visual Lookup Works

Visual Lookup runs automatically when you view a photo in the Photos app. The iPhone's Neural Engine analyzes the image using trained machine learning models to detect and classify objects. When something is recognized, sparkle icons appear on the info button (the "i" icon) at the bottom of the screen, indicating that additional information is available.

Tapping the info button reveals the identified object with a "Look Up" option. Tapping Look Up provides relevant information sourced from Siri Knowledge, Wikipedia, and the web — such as the species of a plant, the breed of a dog, or the name and history of a landmark. All of this happens without leaving the Photos app.

What Visual Lookup Can Identify

Apple has steadily expanded the categories Visual Lookup recognizes:

Plants and flowers — Species identification with care information
Animals — Dog breeds, cat breeds, birds, insects, spiders, and fish
Landmarks — Famous buildings, monuments, and points of interest worldwide
Artwork — Paintings, sculptures, and artistic works
Books — Identifies books by their covers
Food — Dishes with recipe suggestions
Car models — Make and model identification (iOS 17+)
Laundry symbols — Explains care label symbols (iOS 17+)
Dashboard lights — Identifies car warning indicators (iOS 17+)

Visual Lookup and Photo Management

Visual Lookup can be a useful companion when organizing or cleaning up your photo library. By identifying what is in your photos, it can help you quickly determine whether a photo is worth keeping. For example, if you took several photos of a flower to identify it, once you have the answer you may want to delete the extra shots.

The feature also integrates with the Photos app's search functionality. You can search for "dog" or "landmark" or "flower" to find photos containing those subjects, making it easier to locate specific images when your library grows large.

Lift Subject from Background

Starting with iOS 16, Visual Lookup gained the ability to lift subjects from photo backgrounds. By long-pressing on a recognized subject, you can isolate it from the background and copy, share, or drop it into other apps like Messages, Notes, or email. This creates a cutout with a transparent background, similar to a professional photo editing tool but entirely automatic and on-device.

Privacy

All Visual Lookup processing happens on your iPhone using the Neural Engine. Your photos are not sent to Apple's servers for analysis. When you tap "Look Up" for additional information, a query about the identified object (not your photo) may be sent to retrieve relevant web results, but the image itself remains on your device.

Related Terms

Deep Fusion — Computational photography for better photo detail
Live Photos — Photos that capture motion and sound
Optimize iPhone Storage — Reduces local photo storage usage

Learn More

Frequently Asked Questions

Which iPhones support Visual Lookup?

Visual Lookup requires an iPhone with an A12 Bionic chip or later running iOS 15 or newer. This includes iPhone XS, XR, and all subsequent models.

Does Visual Lookup send my photos to Apple?

No. Visual Lookup uses on-device machine learning. Your photos are not uploaded to Apple's servers for analysis, maintaining your privacy.

What can Visual Lookup identify?

Plants, flowers, dog and cat breeds, birds, insects, landmarks, artwork, books, food, car models, laundry symbols, and dashboard warning lights. Apple continues to expand the categories with each iOS update.

Too Many Photos Taking Up Space?

Swype Photo Cleaner makes it easy to clean up your camera roll. Swipe left to delete, right to keep — simple and fast.

Download Swype Free