Identify plants, animals, monuments and more thanks to the camera of our iPhone without third-party apps: Visual Search

The ability of our iPhone to distinguish text, even handwritten, is truly amazing. But the ability of our iPhone to surprise us goes further when, natively, without third-party applications, it can recognize plants, monuments or breeds of certain pets just by taking a picture of them.

A recognition that only requires a photo

It is true that there have been, for years, several applications that offer us object recognition of our environment quite accurately. The quality of the information, however, tends to vary, without losing sight of the fact that several of these apps require the payment of a subscription.

With iOS 15, Apple introduced the ability to recognize content directly from the Photos app. Visual Lookup, Visual Search in Spanish, is ideal to be able to take a picture of a flower and find out what species it is, for example. A feature that also works with any photo, no matter how old, that we have in the photo library.

The steps to follow to obtain real world item information They are quite simple, specifically these:

1. We open the app Camera on our iPhone.
2. We photograph the object that interests us.
3. We touch the photo we just took in the lower left.
4. We touch the “i” at the bottom whenever a small star appears on it.
5. We touch the center of the image that we want to recognize.

Automatically we will see that it appears to us, under the title Siri Informationseveral Wikipedia entries with information regarding the element that we have photographed. Immediately below are Similar web imageswhich can also be used to finish specifying the results or, by comparison, to find information on the web about specific elements.

As we can see in the captures, in this case we have photographed some flowers to know their name. This system, however, works with much more. We can find general knowledge results from Siri if we photograph pictures, famous photos or paintings, information about books, about important monuments and also knowing the breed of dogs and cats.

The accuracy of the results always It will vary depending on what we are photographing, as well as the clarity, focus and detail that the image collects from the object itself. The results, however, are surprising. Results, as we have already said, that we will know if they are available thanks to the little star next to the “i” button that gives us access to the image information.