Skip to main content

How to use Visual Intelligence on your iPhone with iOS 18.2

Using Visual Intelligence on an iPhone 16 Pro showing ChatGPT answer.
Visual Intelligence on iPhones relies on the camera to make sense of the world around. Christine Romero-Chan / Digital Trends

Though the iPhone 16 series launched in September, it shipped with iOS 18 sans Apple Intelligence. Instead, Apple began rolling out Apple Intelligence features starting with iOS 18.1, and then more AI tools arrived in iOS 18.2, including Visual Intelligence for the iPhone 16.

Recommended Videos

Difficulty

Easy

Duration

5 minutes

What You Need

  • An iPhone 16 device

  • At least iOS 18.2

But how do you use Visual Intelligence? It’s actually super easy, but you need to make sure you have an iPhone 16 device, as it requires the new Camera Control feature. Here’s how it works.

Using Visual Intelligence on an iPhone 16 Pro showing Google search results.
Christine Romero-Chan / Digital Trends

What is Visual Intelligence?

Before we get into how to use Visual Intelligence, let's first break down what it is exactly? Think of it like Apple’s version of Google Lens for your iPhone 16.

Once Visual Intelligence is activated, just point the camera at something, and then you can ask ChatGPT to identify it or do a Google Search on what the camera is seeing. The results that you get will vary depending on what you’re pointing at and whether it’s trying to figure out what an object is or get more details about a location. It can even do various actions with text.

Again, Visual Intelligence requires iOS 18.2 and an iPhone 16 device. This means you must have an iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, or iPhone 16 Pro Max to use this feature, as it requires the new Camera Control button.

How to activate Visual Intelligence

Activating Visual Intelligence is pretty easy, but you do have to make sure Apple Intelligence is on first.

Step 1: Launch Settings on your iPhone 16 device.

Step 2: Select Apple Intelligence & Siri.

Open Settings, select Apple Intelligence & Siri.
Digital Trends

Step 3: Make sure the Toggle for Apple Intelligence is On.

Step 4: If this is your first time turning on Apple Intelligence, you may need to join the waitlist first. Once you're in, it may then need to download data in the background before you can start using it.

Step 5: Activate Visual Intelligence by pressing down and holding the Camera Control button.

Step 6: Point your camera at something you want to find out more about.

Step 7: Select the shutter button to do a quick snapshot (not saved to Camera Roll) and then select Ask or Search.

Step 8: Another method is to just point the camera at something and then select Ask or Search directly.

Step 9: By default, the Ask option will ask ChatGPT “What is this?” However, if you want something more specific, just type in a question about what you’re looking at.

Step 10: For Search, it basically gives you Google search results.

Visual Intelligence on iPhone.
Jesse Hollington / Digital Trends
A person using the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max's Camera Control.
Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max Camera Control Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

What can you use Visual Intelligence for?

Visual Intelligence is a simple feature that can open up a world of possibilities.

The basic use case is just looking up what something is. This is great for identifying plants, flowers, animals, food, or anything else. It’s also useful for looking up where you can purchase an item that catches your eye with the Google search results.

Visual Intelligence is also very useful for getting information about a place that you’re passing. For businesses, you can get information on things like hours, available services or menu, contact information, reviews and ratings, and reservations. You can even place an order for delivery. You can also call a phone number or go to the website, all just from pointing Visual Intelligence at a business.

Lastly, you can use Visual Intelligence on text for a variety of reasons. Visual Intelligence can help you summarize text, translate it, or even read it out loud. And if there’s contact information, Visual Intelligence can call the number, start an email, create calendar events, and more.

As you can see, there’s quite a lot that you can now do with Visual Intelligence through the Camera Control. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like this feature will end up on the iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max due to the Camera Control requirement, which allows Apple to make it a selling point for the iPhone 16 series.

Christine Romero-Chan
Christine Romero-Chan has been writing about technology, specifically Apple, for over a decade. She graduated from California…
Apple iPhone 16e vs. iPhone 14: How different are they?
An iPhone 14 laying on a table. The display is on and showing the home screen.

Apple has just an entirely new device, the iPhone 16e. For those of us expecting a new budget iPhone SE, this has come as a big surprise. Apple's new midrange handset combines the iPhone 14's looks with the iPhone 16's power and Apple Intelligence, and it sits comfortably in the place the iPhone 14 once sat. How does it compare to the phone it's replaced, and is it worth your hard-earned cash?

In this piece, we'll compare the Apple iPhone 16e to the iPhone 14 to see which of these two devices is the better buy, from battery and charging, to performance and cameras. It's admittedly still early days where the 16e is concerned, but there's still a lot to discuss, and we'll be sure to highlight when we need more information to make a final decision.
Apple iPhone 16e vs. iPhone 14: specs

Read more
Apple iPhone 16e pre-orders have begun, so grab yours now
Side view of the iPhone 16e camera lens

Apple has started taking pre-orders for its latest smartphone, the iPhone 16e, in the U.S. and elsewhere. The rather divisive budget-focused smartphone from Apple is a major evolution over the now-defunct iPhone SE and sits underneath the mainline iPhones with a bunch of similarities and some serious feature-trimmings, as well.

It starts at $599 in the U.S. for the 128GB storage variant, while the 256GB and 512GB variants will have you parting ways with $699 and $899, respectively.

Read more
Changing this one thing would have made the iPhone 16e much more fun
iPhone 16e in white.

What a shame the Apple iPhone 16e isn’t more fun. I don't mean exciting, and I’m not talking about the specification, or that a modem is the most technically interesting aspect (it’s important, but modems are inherently a bit dull) of the phone. I mean fun, and I’m specifically talking about it coming in only two colors, and the ones Apple chose are as vanilla and ordinary as you can get.
Two colors

The iPhone 16e is available in black or white. These are the most Apple colors it could have chosen, and fitting as the brand which arguably launched the white smartphone craze in 2008 with the iPhone 3G, when it joined the safe choice black iPhone 3G. What’s old is new again, but things have moved on since the days of a white iPhone capturing attention. Apple has actually moved on too, as we'll soon show, which makes the whole situation feel out of place. There just can’t be any fanfare around a new 2025 iPhone where the choice is either boring black, or overdone white.

Read more