How to search for photos on an iPhone to find specific dates, places, people, and more

• To search for photos on your iPhone, open the Photos app and use the Search icon at the bottom right of the screen.
• You can search by date, place, and content of the photo thanks to the phone's artificial intelligence.
• You can also use the Photo app's browse tool to find photos by people, place, category, and more.

Your iPhone has a surprisingly powerful photo search tool you may not know about. It's not obvious because the Photos app has an unassuming search button that offers little in the way of search assistance.

But, behind the scenes, the iPhone combines metadata about your photos - like date and geolocation - with powerful artificial intelligence that infers things about the content of the photo to give you a lot of ways to zero in on exactly the photo you're looking for. The Photos app gives you two useful ways to find photos: by browsing or searching.

How to search for photos on an iPhone

Start the Photos app and then tap "Search" in the lower right corner of the screen. Tap the search box at the top of the screen. There are a number of ways you can search:

• Date: Enter a date - either a month or year. You can search broadly (all of 2017 or all Januarys) or enter a specific month, like January 2019.
• Place: You can enter a city, state, or country.
• Business: You can enter the name of a retail establishment, museum, or similar location. For example, "Alderwood Mall" or "Museum of Modern Art."
• Category: You can even search for events and themes like "beach," "swimming," or "sport."
• Caption: If you've added captions to photos, that text is fully searchable as well.

When you search, you will often see subcategories appear. For example, if you search by date, you may see a list of locations. These are places that you took photos on the specified date, and you can tap one to narrow your search.

How to browse for photos on your iPhone

Start the Photos app and then tap "Search" in the lower right corner of the screen. There are several ways to find a photo. For example, you can browse using categories your iPhone has collected.

• Moments: These are listed at the top of the page. Your iPhone assembles Moments based on your specific collection of photos. For example, it might recognize a season (like winter), events like weddings, and more. Your Moments will differ from the Moments on someone else's iPhone.
• People: Your iPhone uses machine learning to detect and recognize faces throughout your collection. You can tap a face in the People list to see all the photos your phone could find with that person.
• Places: Likewise, this is a collection of photos by geographic location.
• Categories: Using machine learning, your phone identifies subjects and themes in your photos and sorts them into categories. You may have categories like animals, cars, food, and concerts.

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