Visual Intelligence is one of the best features of Apple Intelligence, but it was previously limited to the iPhone 16 series. Now, with iOS 18.4, you can finally take advantage of this great feature to do a lot of cool tricks on iPhone 15 Pro models, too.
1
Determine Calories in Your Food
If you’ve just started making healthier food choices and are thoughtful about your food selections, Visual Intelligence can streamline your decision-making process. Using it, you can quickly identify a dish and determine how many calories it contains. That way, you can decide whether you can have it guilt-free.
To identify a dish’s calories, bring up Visual Intelligence—via the Action Button or Control Center—and click a picture of the dish. Tap Ask, and Visual Intelligence will query ChatGPT to return the dish’s name and approximate calories. You can then follow up and ask further questions or perhaps its recipe.
Visual Intelligence’s calorie counts, of course, are an estimate. So, the number of calories you’ll eventually consume depends on the serving and the portion you’re eating.
2
Identify Plants and Animals
Another interesting use case for Visual Intelligence is to identify plants and animals. If you’re into gardening and are always looking for new plants and flowers to add to your garden or love animals and are just curious about them, you can easily find the information without having to ask anyone or write perfect queries to seek help from Google.
Visual Intelligence can effectively identify plants and animals across different species, though it may have some trouble identifying mixed breeds of animals. Once identified, you can make further queries about the plant or animal. For example, if it’s a plant, you can ask Visual Intelligence for its local name, the ideal environment for its optimal growth, or just some interesting facts.
3
Identify Landmarks and Places
If you frequently travel and like exploring new places, you can make your trips more informative with Visual Intelligence. The feature works like a travel guide by giving you all the information you need about a landmark or place you’re at or planning to visit.
Just snap a picture of the place, and Visual Intelligence will show you all the essential details about it. You can then dive deeper to learn about its history or significance with your follow-up questions.
Alternatively, if you spot a landmark or place on a board or flyer, you can plan a visit to it. For example, after Visual Intelligence identifies the landmark or place, you can ask things like what’s the best time of the day to visit it, nearby attractions you can visit while you’re there, or food or coffee places in the vicinity you can grab quick snacks from. Not only that, but you can even ask Visual Intelligence about the best route to visit the spot from your current location and the most suitable mode of transportation you can take to reach there, and it’ll assist you with that, too. You must, of course, cross-check this information to be doubly sure.
4
Look Up Items and Shop for Them
Visual Intelligence is a great tool to identify items you come across in everyday life—both in person and online. This could be a watch or sneaker you see someone wearing, a port or cable on a device, or a part inside a device or vehicle; anything you want to know about.
You can then get into the nitty-gritty to narrow down the options and increase your chances of finding exactly what you want. In some cases, Visual Intelligence can even help you find prices and places or links to buy the identified product.
5
Identify Problems With Your Device or Vehicle and Troubleshoot It
In the same vein as identifying devices and their parts, Visual Intelligence can also help troubleshoot issues with your vehicle or devices at home. This can prove a lifesaver in various scenarios.
For instance, if the LED light on your router suddenly starts blinking red, you can ask Visual Intelligence about it. It’ll give you detailed information about the problem, including possible causes. You can even ask it to list some fixes you can try to troubleshoot the problem.
Other scenarios where this can be useful include identifying and fixing errors (like Blue Screen of Death) on your computer, learning about the lights on your car’s dashboard, or identifying the purpose of a button on a device or a vehicle.
6
Solve Math Equations and Answer Questions Across Subjects
Aside from identifying things and assisting you with troubleshooting issues with your devices or vehicles, Visual Intelligence is great at solving math problems and answering questions across various subjects. So, if you’re a student or help kids at home with their homework, you can quickly get answers to most problems with Visual Intelligence.
Visual Intelligence does a good job of identifying the kind of response the question requires and answers it accordingly. For example, if it’s a math equation, Visual Intelligence will break down the solution into steps with an explanation. Meanwhile, if it’s a multiple-choice question, it’ll just give you the correct answer among all the options, though you can ask it to explain its response in detail as a follow-up question.
7
Get Stuff Read Aloud
For times when you stumble upon a piece of text but can’t read it, perhaps because you’re in a moving vehicle or don’t have the time, you can tell Visual Intelligence to read it aloud for you.
To do this, take a picture of the text snippet by invoking Visual Intelligence, then tap the Ask button. Visual Intelligence will start reading the text for you. If you don’t see the button, ask it to do so as a follow-up question using the search bar at the bottom.
Once the playback begins, you can minimize the Visual Intelligence screen and start using any other app or lock the device, and it’ll continue to read the text. You’ll see a mini version of the player on your iPhone’s Dynamic Island with a bunch of controls. Use them to jump backward or forward in the playback or stop the playback at any time.
8
Scan Text to Quickly Summarize or Translate It
Besides reading a text snippet aloud, Visual Intelligence can also help you with other text-related operations. For example, you can use it to summarize long paragraphs and get a quick summary to save yourself the effort of going through the text all by yourself. You can even ask Visual Intelligence questions related to the text.
Similarly, you can take a picture of some text and ask Visual Intelligence to translate it into another language. This can come in handy when you’re traveling and want to understand the signage on the streets or restaurants.
Summarizing and translating text is easy. As soon as you click a picture of the text you want summarized or translated, tap the Summarize or Translate button on the screen, and Visual Intelligence will give you a response. You’ll only see the Translate button when the text is in a language that isn’t your iPhone’s default language. Having this feature right on your iPhone is nice, though you can always use ChatGPT to translate text, too.
Those were just a few valuable applications of Visual Intelligence on an iPhone. You can also use the feature to add events to your calendar directly from flyers or posters, better understand nutritional information on food packaging, and get details about a business, like its working hours or menu, among other things. So go ahead, set up Visual Intelligence on your iPhone, and explore all the ways you can use it.
