What kind of a plant is this? Find out with your iPhone’s camera!

Is it a white honey clover or a robinia? Whether you have a green thumb or not, the sheer amount of different plant species are hard to tell apart. Fortunately, your iPhone knows how to handle that!

I can hear you thinking: which app should I download again? Well, none at all. This super handy trick can simply be found in the Photoapp from your iPhone. You must have iOS 15 or newer installed on your device, but also change your region and language settings. The Visual Lookup function then does all the work.

iPhone: which plant is this?

The Photoapp on your iPhone can identify all kinds of objects, animals, works of art and therefore also plants since iOS 15. Then Siri shows useful information about the plant in question. OMT editor Sabine tells you how to Visual Lookup can use to find out which plants and flowers you will encounter along the way.

Visual Lookup is unfortunately not yet officially available in the Netherlands, but you can still use it via a detour. You will then have to adjust your region settings to a country in which the function is active, such as the United Kingdom or Germany. Settings -> General -> Language & Region – Region. In addition, you should also set Siri to English and make sure that Siri Look Up is activated. You can turn this setting on at Siri and search.

To work

Open the Photos app on your iPhone and take a photo (or select one from your library) of a plant or flower. Then click at the very bottom on the information icon (i) with two stars next to it. Then press Look Up and Siri tells you which plant or flower you have in front of you and gives you some useful information.

There are several categories that your iPhone can identify. In addition to plants and flowers, animals, art, sights and books can also be recognized. The Visual Lookup –function can also be extremely useful if you are traveling and are not sure whether or not you are standing in front of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona.