identify plants from Photos app

In this tip, we’ll explain how to identify plants and flowers using the Photos app on your iPhone. By default, this function is not available in the Netherlands, but it does work with a trick. iPhoned show you how to do that.

NB! This cool feature is not available by default for Dutch iPhones. For this to work you need to set your iPhone to ‘American’. You do this at ‘Settings > General > Language and Region’. There you set iPhone Language to ‘English’ and Region to ‘United States’. After changing these settings, you have to manually restart your iPhone. Now it is possible to automatically recognize plants from your photos.

The Photos app can do more than you think

Summer has started again and all the plants are in bloom. Do you not have green fingers but are you very interested in nature? Then the iPhone can lend you a hand! Since iOS 15 it is possible to have the photos on your iPhone scanned for information. For example, you can recognize plants or flowers with the Photos app. In this tip you can read exactly how to do that.

Photos: what plants do I have in my garden?

Apple provided the Photos app with a major update with iOS 15 last year. Your iPhone will now automatically recognize the content of a photo. For example, do you search for “buildings” or “selfies” in the Photos app? Then you will immediately see all photos that contain that keyword. You don’t even have to download a special app or manually tag the photos with these keywords (or tags). An algorithm recognizes them automatically.

But you can also request more precise information. The Photos app can also be used to spot and identify different plants. This is useful for determining the toxicity of a plant or for figuring out how much water to give your houseplant.

NB! Although it seems that most plants seem to be well recognized, you can’t just assume that a plant is not poisonous. So be careful when you start working with edible plants, for example.

Identifying plants, flowers and trees

There are a number of ways you can identify the plants using this ‘Visual Lookup’. However, it is easiest to use the function in the Photos app. You do that in the following way.

This will show you all the information about the found plant. You can read some of the information right away. Do you want to know more? Then tap ‘read more’ to really get to know the plant better. You can also use the function with flowers, cars and landmarks.