When Apple Photos is enough
Apple Photos is on the phone already, costs nothing, and is where Apple’s own indexing surfaces first. For a large share of everyday searches it is simply the right tool. Apple’s iPhone User Guide lists what the Photos search field accepts, and the list is longer than most people realise.
- Date (month or year), place (city or state), business names such as museums, categories such as “beach or sunset”, and events such as sports games or concerts.
- People or pets you have named — Photos “sorts photos and videos of people, dogs, and cats in the People & Pets collection”, and Apple states that this face analysis happens on the device.
- Text inside a photo, “an email address or phone number, for example”, plus any caption you have written.
- With Apple Intelligence, a plain-language description: Apple’s own example query is “Maya skateboarding in a tie-dye shirt.” Apple says you can also “search video clips for key moments.”
- Duplicates, under Collections › Utilities › Duplicates, where a set is combined with Merge.
- One library across devices: iCloud Photos keeps the pictures and the People & Pets names in sync. Queryable has no equivalent — its index is local to one device.
When Queryable adds something
Queryable is worth its one-time price in a narrower set of situations: mostly where Apple’s description search is unavailable to you, or where what you want is not searching by words at all.
- Your iPhone or iPad is not on Apple’s Apple Intelligence list — which leaves out every iPhone before the 15 Pro, and the standard iPhone 15 and 15 Plus — but it runs iOS 18.0 or later.
- Your device language is not one of Apple’s sixteen, or your device was purchased in mainland China, where Apple states Apple Intelligence features do not currently work. The Greater China edition, 寻隐, searches Chinese with a natively trained Chinese encoder.
- You want to search with a picture instead of words, or pull up “Similar Photos” from any result you are already looking at. Apple’s guide documents no search by example image.
- You want finer cleanup than exact duplicates — nearly identical frames and whole similar scenes, with the keeper chosen for you and videos left untouched.
- You want search that makes no network request of its own and keeps working in airplane mode.
- You want to read the indexing and search code.
Compare
Every Apple cell below is a fact Apple publishes, with the source numbered at the end of the cell. Where Apple publishes nothing, the cell says so rather than guessing. Every Queryable cell describes the shipping app.
| Dimension | Apple Photos (iOS 27) | Queryable 2.1.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free. Photos is part of iOS; there is nothing to buy and no subscription. [1] | $4.99 on the US App Store, paid once. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no free tier and no trial. In mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan it is sold separately as 寻隐 / 尋隱, at ¥1 on the mainland China storefront. [7] |
| Devices and Apple Intelligence | Photos search itself is part of iOS. Description search is an Apple Intelligence feature, which Apple lists on iOS 27 for “iPhone 16 models or later, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone Air, iPad mini (A17 Pro), … iPad models with M1 or later”, with “up to 8 GB of storage” (up to 14 GB on the newest models) and matching device and Siri languages. [1][2] | Any iPhone or iPad running iOS 18.0 or later. No Apple Intelligence requirement, no account and no sign-in. [7][8] |
| Where processing happens, and offline use | Apple says Photos “uses on-device machine learning” for scene classification, people and pets identification and quality analysis. Enhanced Visual Search is the documented exception: “Your device privately matches places in your photos to a global index Apple maintains on our servers,” and it can be switched off. Apple does not publish where Apple Intelligence description search runs, or whether Photos search works with no network connection. [3][1] | On the device, through Core ML and Metal; the app makes no network request of its own. Once a photo is indexed, searching for it works with networking switched off. Two boundaries: the one-time language-pack download for translated queries, and iCloud-only originals, which must be made available on the device before indexing. [8][9] |
| Describe a scene in words | Yes, with Apple Intelligence: “With Apple Intelligence, you can search for specific images by describing what you want to find. You can also search video clips for key moments.” [1] | Yes, on every supported device. A sentence is encoded on the phone by a MobileCLIP-S2 text model into the same 512-dimension space as the photos, and the library is ranked by similarity. Searching video by its moments is not a Queryable feature. [8] |
| Search with an example photo | Apple does not publish this. The search Apple documents is typed text and tapped suggestions; the guide describes no way to search the library with a reference image. [1] | Yes. A camera button in the search bar takes a photo or picks one from the library and uses it as the query, and every photo’s detail view has a “Similar Photos” panel. [8] |
| Text inside photos (OCR) | Yes. Apple lists “Text (an email address or phone number, for example)” among the search terms, and Live Text reads text in the camera frame — though it “isn’t available in all regions or languages”. [1][6] | No. Queryable performs no text recognition of any kind; a screenshot is found by what it looks like, never by the words printed in it. [8] |
| People and pets | Yes. Photos “sorts photos and videos of people, dogs, and cats in the People & Pets collection”; name one once, then search by that name. Apple states recognition is on-device, and names sync across iCloud devices. [4][3] | No face, people or pet recognition, and no albums, places or map. Naming someone is not possible. [8] |
| Time filtering and sorting | Yes. A month or year is a documented search term, and results can be sorted by “Added” or “Captured” and filtered by options such as Favorites or Edited. [1] | Time filters only: Last Week, Last Month, 3 Months, 6 Months, Last Year, or a specific year from the photos actually indexed. Results are ranked by similarity and cannot be sorted by date. [8] |
| Duplicate and similar-photo cleanup | Exact duplicates only, in Collections › Utilities › Duplicates, combined with Merge. Apple publishes no near-duplicate or similar-scene grouping. If the library has none, the collection does not appear. [5] | Three tiers from one scan — Exact Duplicates, Nearly Identical and Similar Scenes — with an aesthetic score pre-selecting the photo to keep and one system confirmation dialog for the batch. Stills only: videos are never grouped or deleted. [8] |
| Query languages and regions | Apple Intelligence “is available with Siri and device language set to Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, or Vietnamese”. Apple also states its features “will not currently work for supported devices purchased in China mainland”. [1][2] | Type in your own language: the English edition translates a non-English query on the device with Apple’s Translation framework (a one-time free language-pack download) and searches with the original and the translation together. In mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan the app is sold as 寻隐 / 尋隱, with a natively trained Chinese text encoder. The interface ships in 18 languages. [8] |
| Open source | No. Apple does not publish the source code of Photos. | Partly. The MIT-licensed core is public at mazzzystar/Queryable (2,994 GitHub stars), but it stops at 29 March 2026: everything added in 2.1.2–2.1.6 is in a private repository. [10] |
| Result quality, accuracy and speed | Not tested. | Not tested. |
Result quality, accuracy and speed: No ranking quality, recall, precision, indexing speed or search latency was measured for this page. A claim of that kind requires the controlled hands-on test in the project’s comparison research protocol, and this page is deliberately published without one.
Which to choose
Choose Apple Photos if…
- Your iPhone is on Apple’s Apple Intelligence list, your device and Siri language is one of the sixteen Apple supports, and the device was not purchased in mainland China.
- You mostly search for a named person or pet, a place, a date, or the text in a screenshot or receipt.
- You want the same search on iPhone, iPad and Mac without indexing each device.
- You would rather not pay for anything.
Choose Queryable if…
- Your device runs iOS 18.0 or later but not Apple Intelligence, or your language or region is outside Apple’s list.
- You want to search with a sample photo, or open “Similar Photos” from any result.
- You want near-duplicates and similar scenes cleaned up, not only exact duplicates.
- You want a search path that makes no network request of its own.
What this page does not claim
The honest list of what Queryable cannot do is longer than the list of what Apple Photos cannot do.
- Neither app’s result quality was tested. No sentence here says one finds photos better, faster or more accurately.
- Queryable does not read text in photos, recognise faces, sort results by date, open a result in Apple Photos, or appear in Spotlight, Shortcuts or widgets.
- Queryable indexes only while its indexing screen is open; there is no background indexing.
- Photos synced onto the device from a Mac into custom albums are outside what Queryable can see.
- The index lives on one device and is not synced or backed up.
Methodology
Dates and storefront: every Apple figure comes from Apple’s own pages — the US English iPhone User Guide for iOS 27, Apple’s Apple Intelligence availability article, and Photos & Privacy on Apple Legal — read on 20 September 2026 and quoted wherever the wording matters. The Queryable side describes version 2.1.6 (released 11 August 2026, minimum iOS 18.0); its US App Store price was re-read on 30 October 2026. Where this page and Apple disagree, believe Apple.
What was tested: nothing. This is a facts-only comparison published under the Tier 1 rules of the project’s comparison research protocol: every Apple cell is a fact Apple publishes, with its source numbered; every Queryable cell describes the shipping app; anything neither side publishes says “Not published”, and result quality is marked “Not tested”. No row states a ranking, accuracy, recall or speed figure. Queryable publishes this page, so read it as our argument checked against Apple’s own pages, not as a neutral review. Corrections are welcome through the project’s GitHub repository.
Citations
Every Apple Photos statement above was read from the pages below on the date shown. Vendor pages change without notice; if one now says something different, the vendor is right and this page is stale.
- Apple — Search for photos and videos on iPhone (iPhone User Guide, iOS 27) Source for the accepted search terms, the Apple Intelligence description-search sentence and its example query, the sort and filter options, and the device and language footnote.
- Apple — How to get the next generation of Apple Intelligence Source for the supported device list, storage and matched-language requirements, the sixteen supported languages, and the mainland China statement.
- Apple — Photos & Privacy (Apple Legal, dated 12 December 2025) Source for on-device analysis in Photos, on-device face recognition, and the Enhanced Visual Search server index.
- Apple — Find and name people and pets in Photos on iPhone Source for the People & Pets collection, naming a person, dog or cat, and iCloud sync of those names.
- Apple — Merge duplicate photos and videos on iPhone Source for the Duplicates collection under Collections › Utilities and the Merge action.
- Use Live Text with your iPhone camera — iPhone User Guide Source for Live Text reading text in the camera frame, and for its regional and language limits.
- Queryable on the US App Store Source for the one-time price, the absence of in-app purchases, the minimum iOS version and the “Data Not Collected” privacy label.
- How Queryable works The on-device model, the local index, the search path and the app’s documented limits, taken from the shipping 2.1.6 build.
- Offline AI photo search The iCloud-only boundary and what “offline” does and does not cover during indexing.
- mazzzystar/Queryable — MIT licence The public indexing and search core. Last pushed 29 March 2026, so it predates the 2.1.2–2.1.6 features (translation, search by photo, time filters, three-tier cleanup).
Questions about Apple Photos and Queryable
Do I still need Queryable if my iPhone has Apple Intelligence?
Often not. If your iPhone runs Apple Intelligence in a supported language, Apple Photos already searches from a description. Queryable adds three things Apple does not document: searching with an example photo, a three-tier similar-photo cleanup, and a search path that makes no network request of its own. It also runs on every iPhone and iPad with iOS 18.0 or later, including models Apple Intelligence does not support.
Does Apple Photos search work without Apple Intelligence?
Yes. Apple’s iPhone User Guide says the Photos search field accepts a date, a place, a business name, a category such as “beach or sunset”, an event, people or pets you have named, text such as an email address or phone number, and captions. Apple presents searching by a free-form description separately, as an Apple Intelligence feature.
Can Queryable find the text inside a screenshot?
No. Queryable performs no text recognition, so it matches a screenshot by what the image looks like, not by the words printed in it. Apple Photos does search text inside photos, so for receipts, signs, screenshots and documents Apple Photos is the right tool.
Which one works with no internet connection?
Queryable, with two caveats. Once a photo is indexed, searching for it runs entirely on the device and keeps working in airplane mode; but translated non-English queries need a one-time free language-pack download, and photos stored only in iCloud must be made available on the device before Queryable can index them. Apple does not publish whether Photos search works with no network connection.
Which one finds photos of a specific person?
Apple Photos. It groups faces into a People & Pets collection, lets you name a person, dog or cat, and then finds them by that name. Queryable has no face, people or pet recognition at all.
Can I use both?
Yes, and that is the normal arrangement. Both read the same photo library and neither replaces the other: Apple Photos for people, places, dates and the text inside images; Queryable for describing a scene on a device without Apple Intelligence, searching with an example photo, and clearing out near-duplicates.