While you can scroll through the Photos app to find photos like everyone else, it will be easier for you if you use the Search feature. Below, I’ll share some search tips to help you find photos faster in your iPhone’s native Photos app.
Search Photos Using Keywords
The fastest way to find photos in the Photos app is to use keywords. Keywords can be anything, from people and places to events and objects. However, you’ll need to tag people’s faces in the Photos app so you can find them by their name.
To search for photos using keywords, tap the Search icon at the top of the Photos app and type your keyword. When you do so, you’ll see suggestions for items, if available. These suggestions will have an icon to the left of them, indicating their type. For example, you might see a Live Text icon or a Screenshot icon in some cases, while a regular Search icon in others.
In addition, you will also see a number to the right of these keyword suggestions indicating the number of photos available for that keyword. You can then tap on a suggestion to see all relevant results, depending on your preference.
If a search term shows multiple photos, you can add more keywords to your search query to narrow down the results. For example, you can combine the keyword “watch” with “Citizen” to find all photos of Citizen brand watches in your library.
View photos by date
When you want to see all photos taken on a particular day in a particular month of a year, the Photos app lets you filter the results using the date.
Just access Search. Then, type the date, month, and year like this: “April 18, 2024,” and the Photos app will show all photos from that date.
Search photos using captions
Another way to quickly find a photo in the Photos app on your iPhone is to view its caption. A caption is a text label that you add to a photo to make it easier to find later. So, if you’ve added captions to your photos before, you can view them by typing caption in Search and selecting the suggestion with the Aa text.
On the other hand, if you’re hearing about captions for the first time, you’ll need to add captions to your photos first to be able to use them to search for photos in the app. You can use a unique caption for each photo or use the same caption to tag similar photos.
Filter photos using app names
The Photos app library shows photos from various sources. Although it creates albums for some apps like WhatsApp, this is not the case for all apps.
Thankfully, you can search using app names to get to photos quickly. Just type the name of the app in Search. Then, select the suggestion with the App Store icon next to it. You’ll now see all the photos saved from that app in your library.
View photos by device names
Just like using the app name, Apple’s Photos app also lets you search for photos captured using a particular device. This is useful when you want to quickly find photos taken on your camera or another smartphone.
If you remember taking some photos with another device and storing them in the Photos app, type the device name in the search bar. Photos will show you some suggestions. Select the relevant photos to see all the photos.
Filter photos by image types
With iOS 18, Apple has switched to a single view for the Photos app, so all your photos, videos, and other media now appear on a single page. Since this can make finding photos a bit tricky, Apple has added a Media Types collection under your Library; this categorizes all items into different media types, such as portraits, long exposures, screenshots, RAW, and more.
To access these, scroll to the end of your Library, and you’ll see several collections including media types.
Find duplicates, import and more with Utilities
Utilities is another collection in the Photos app that lists albums like Hidden, Recently Deleted, Duplicates, Receipts, Recently Edited and more. To find it, scroll to the bottom of the Photos app below your Library; you’ll see it just below the Media Types collection. From here, select a category to see all the relevant photos.
Just like Media Types, the Utilities collection also helps you find what you need. My favorites are Handwriting, QR Codes, Receipts and Recently Saved.
These tips will help you save time and effort finding photos in your massive image library. Sure, you might forget to include them in your searches initially, but once you do it a few times, they’ll become second nature.