Here’s how to turn off advanced visual search if you’re concerned about privacy

Apple released it iOS 18.2 in December, and that the update brought Mail Categories and more features new to iPhones, including Apple Intelligence functionality to some recent iPhone models. But when Apple released it iOS 18 in September, a feature included in the update sends photo data from your iPhone to Apple’s servers in an effort to help you find better photos in your photo library. Apple calls this feature Enhanced Visual Search, and it’s enabled by default.

Read more: Everything you need to know about iOS 18

The privacy measures of Apple Enhanced Visual Search

“Enhanced Visual Search in Photos allows you to search photos with landmarks or points of interest”, Apple wrote online. “Your device privately matches the locations in your photos to a global index that Apple maintains on our servers.”

According to Apple research postparts of a photo that might contain a reference point are encrypted and sent to Apple’s servers – the whole picture is not sent. Your encrypted data is also a point among other pieces of junk data that are not associated with any of your images, or anyone else’s.

Once the data reaches the Apple server, the server does not decrypt the data – it only works with the encrypted data. If the server determines whether or not the encrypted photo data contains a matching reference point, the server then sends your device an encrypted response, which your device then decrypts.

The company also wrote in the post that it uses a third-party operator HTTP ignorant relay to hide the IP address of your data. And every time your iPhone sends photo data to a server the data is given a new IP address.

But some people have asked if it is enough to protect your data.

“If my computer sends data to the computer manufacturer, then it’s not private, or at least not entirely private.” developer Jeff Johnson he wrote online. “A software bug would be enough to make users vulnerable, and Apple cannot guarantee that its software does not include bugs.”

If you are worried about Enhanced visual search that sends your photo data to Apple servers, here’s how to disable the function. It is important to note that if you have a iCloud account to store photos or backup your iPhone data, your photos are always on Apple’s servers. Disabling this feature does not prevent this.

How to turn off advanced visual search

1. open Settings.
2. Tap Apps.
3. Tap Photographs.
4. Tap the toggle next to it Enhanced visual search.

Now, your iPhone will not send encrypted photo data to Apple’s servers to help you find photos on your iPhone. This also means that searching for photos on your iPhone will probably suffer. If you want to turn the function back, follow the steps above.

For more on iOS 18, here’s what you need to know iOS 18.2 and iOS 18.1 and ours Cheat sheet iOS 18. You can also check out what could come to your iPhone with iOS 18.3.

Look at this: What to expect from Apple in 2025

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