How to use Visual Intelligence on your iPhone with iOS 26
By now, you should have upgraded to iOS 26 on your iPhone, and the update is important. In addition to rolling out a whole new look (called Liquid Glass), iOS 26 introduces a host of new and improved features, from a new battery saver mode to a mobile version of the classic Preview Mac app.
Another change introduced by iOS 26 is the introduction of an expanded visual intelligence tool, which is part of Apple Intelligence. It leverages AI to analyze what’s on your phone screen or what your camera is looking at. So you can use it to identify objects, for example, or choose a date and time from a flyer and add them to your camera.
Since this is an Apple Intelligence feature, you need to have a phone that supports AI: iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max, any iPhone 16 model, any iPhone 17 model, or iPhone Air will work. Assuming you have one of these models and have iOS 26 installed, we can take a look at what Visual Intelligence is capable of.
Get information about screenshots
If you can capture something on your iPhone, you can get insights from it using Visual Intelligence. Press the volume up button and the side button at the same time to take a screenshot, and your visual intelligence options appear at the bottom (although they may vary slightly depending on what’s on the screen).
In the lower left corner you have a Ask button. Tap it to ask ChatGPT anything about what’s on the screen, from a building captured in a photo to a settings screen in one of your apps. You can ask any question on your captured image, just like you would if you were uploading an image to the ChatGPT app.
Then there is the Research in the lower right corner, which loads a panel displaying similar images found by Google. If you want to be more specific, scribble with your finger on part of the image and Google will look for visual matches only with that section of the screen. You can use it to find an online store selling something you encountered online, for example, or to identify an object or person.
If Visual Intelligence recognizes a time and date in your screenshot (a poster for a concert perhaps), you will see a Add to calendar at the bottom which will do just that: time, date and location information can all be added and you can edit the details if necessary. You might also see buttons labeled To summarize (to summarize blocks of text) or Seek (for something that can be identified, such as a company logo, landmark, or animal).
Sometimes visual intelligence immediately recognizes something in a screenshot (like a species of plant), and you can simply tap the label to get more information. Other options you might see based on the contents of the screenshot are Read aloud (so that the image text is read to you) and direct links to websites that are located somewhere in the on-screen information.
When you’ve finished your visual intelligence analysis, you can tap the check mark (top right) to save the screenshot to your photo gallery, or the cross symbol (top left) to delete it. If you don’t like seeing the full-screen preview every time you take a screenshot, you can turn it off via General > Screenshot > Full Screen Previews in Settings: This will take you back to the old tile approach, and you can still tap the tile to use visual intelligence.
Get information through your camera
You can also use real-time visual intelligence through your iPhone’s camera. This feature was actually introduced with iOS 18.2 and continues in iOS 26. It works much like the screenshot options we’ve already covered, and there’s some overlap in functionality, but in this case you can point the AI ​​at anything in the world around you.
The easiest way to launch Visual Intelligence in camera mode is to hold down the camera control button on your iPhone (bottom right when looking at it in portrait orientation). For models that don’t have camera controls (iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPhone 16e), you can launch the feature via the action button or from the Visual Intelligence icon in Control Center (it looks like the Apple Intelligence logo in a frame).
If you don’t see the icon in Control Center when you swipe from the upper right corner of the screen, tap the icon + (plus) in the upper left corner to add it. You can also set up a Visual Intelligence shortcut from the lock screen, which you can do by long-pressing your finger on the lock screen and then choosing Personalize.
Once you have launched Visual Intelligence in camera mode, you can implement it. There are three buttons at the bottom: Ask (to ask ChatGPT questions about what you’re looking at), a circular capture button (to take a photo for further analysis), and Research (to launch a Google image search for what you are looking at).
You can, for example, point your camera at the label of a wine bottle and ask ChatGPT to tell you more about it, including which foods it pairs well with. You can also do a Google search based on a bike you’ve spotted on the street, to find out how much the model costs and where you can buy it.
If you take a photo, you get many of the same options on screen as mentioned above: you can summarize, translate, or read aloud the text, add events to your calendar, and search the web for more information. Animals and plants can be identified, and you can also point your camera at a business on the street to find out more details about it, including its contact number and opening hours. Press the X cross symbol to remove a captured image from the screen.
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