iOS 27macOS 27Apple IntelligenceiPhonemacOSsearch

Apple Intelligence Screenshots: What It Can Do in iOS 27

Name: Pizazoo
Author: Pizazoo

What Apple Intelligence does with screenshots in iOS 27 and macOS 27: Visual Intelligence, Photos search, device limits, privacy, and options without it.

October 6, 20267 min read

Muhammed BasilFounder & maker of Pizazoo

On an iPhone 15 Pro or later running iOS 27, Apple Intelligence turns a screenshot into a starting point: press the screenshot buttons and Visual Intelligence lets you search the web for what is on screen, ask a question, add an event to Calendar, summarize text, or turn a barcode into a Wallet pass. In the Photos app, it lets you find images by describing them in plain language. On a Mac, the same screen tools arrive in macOS 27 Golden Gate through Siri AI (Beta), which is English-only for now.

The catch is eligibility: most iPhones that run iOS 27 cannot use Apple Intelligence, and neither can Intel Macs. Searching the text inside screenshots does not need it, though.

What does Apple Intelligence do with a screenshot on iPhone?

Take a screenshot as usual (side button plus volume up). On an Apple Intelligence iPhone, Visual Intelligence tools appear at the bottom of the screen, and they vary with what is in the screenshot. You can:

Search: search the web for similar items. Swipe your finger over one object to highlight it and search for just that item.
Ask: ask a question about what is on screen.
Add to Calendar: turn a flyer, invite or ticket into a calendar event.
Summarize or Read Aloud: get a short summary of the text, or hear it read.
Go to a website, or identify a plant or animal, when Visual Intelligence spots one.
Add to Wallet (new in iOS 27): if the screenshot contains a barcode or QR code, tap Add to Wallet to make a pass from it. Apple pitches this for cards that have no digital version, like a library card or gym membership.

When you are done, tap the Close button to delete the screenshot, or the Selected button to save it. So you can act on a screen without adding one more image to your library.

With Siri AI (Beta) turned on, Siri answers instead, and you can drag a rectangle's corners so it focuses on part of the screenshot. (When Visual Intelligence first came to screenshots in 2025, Ask went to ChatGPT and Search looked in Google, Etsy or other supported apps.)

Can you use Visual Intelligence on a Mac?

Yes, starting with macOS 27 Golden Gate, but Apple documents it as part of Siri AI (Beta). The Mac User Guide lists Siri AI for a MacBook Neo (A18 Pro) or any Mac with M1 or later, in English to start.

Press Command-Shift-Space bar to select a window, or press Command-Shift-6, then click and hold to select part of the screen.
Type a question in the Ask Siri field, click an action if one appears, or click Image Search to find similar images online.

It acts on what is on your display, not on the screenshots already piled on your desktop, where macOS saves them by default.

Can Apple Intelligence search your screenshots in Photos?

Yes. Natural language search in Photos is an Apple Intelligence feature on iPhone, iPad and Mac: you describe what you want, as in Apple's example "Maya skateboarding in a tie-dye shirt," instead of guessing a keyword. For screenshots, you can describe the content (a train ticket, a recipe, a group chat) rather than recall an exact word.

Two limits: results come from your whole library, so camera photos mix in (Apple suggests adding a media type to the search), and on a Mac, Photos only sees screenshots that are in the photo library, usually the ones synced from your iPhone through iCloud Photos.

Which iPhones and Macs support Apple Intelligence?

Device	Apple Intelligence	Visual Intelligence on screenshots
iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16 models and later, iPhone Air	Yes	Yes, from the screenshot buttons
iPhone 11, 12, 13 and 14 models, iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone SE (2nd and 3rd generation)	No, although they run iOS 27	No
Mac with M1 or later, MacBook Neo (A18 Pro)	Yes	Through Siri AI (Beta), English to start
Intel Mac	No	No

Apple Intelligence also runs on iPad mini (A17 Pro) and iPads with M1 or later, with iOS 27, iPadOS 27 or macOS 27 Golden Gate for the current features. Apple also requires:

Language: device language and Siri language set to the same supported language: Chinese (Simplified or Traditional), Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish or Vietnamese.
Storage: up to 8 GB on most eligible devices, and up to 14 GB on some newer models such as iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air.
Region: Apple Intelligence does not currently work on supported devices bought in mainland China, and Siri AI is not available on iPhone or iPad in the EU.

What are the limits of Apple Intelligence for screenshots?

One screenshot at a time. Visual Intelligence works on the capture in front of you, and Photos search finds rather than files. Nothing sorts or groups the screenshots you already have.
Usage limits. Apple says features that rely on server-side models, including Siri AI, have daily limits, and that expanded access "will be available for a fee in the future."
A beta with a waitlist. Turning on Siri AI in Settings adds you to a waitlist, and it starts in English only.

Is Apple Intelligence private when it reads your screenshots?

Apple says that in many cases Apple Intelligence models run entirely on the device. More complex requests can go to Private Cloud Compute, where "only the data that is relevant to your request is processed on Apple silicon servers," and Apple states that this data "is not stored or made accessible to Apple." Independent researchers can inspect the server software.

Some things leave the device by design: Search and Image Search go out to the web, as does anything you send through the optional ChatGPT extension. The Apple Intelligence report in Settings > Privacy & Security logs Private Cloud Compute requests (last 15 minutes or 7 days) and can export them.

For screenshots of a passport, bank details or a private chat, a simple rule works: if you would not paste it into a search engine, do not tap Search.

How do you search screenshots without Apple Intelligence?

Every iPhone that runs iOS 27 still gets solid text search:

Photos search finds text. Apple lists text, such as an email address or phone number, as a Photos search option separate from Apple Intelligence. Keep Live Text on in Settings > General > Language & Region.
Live Text on one screenshot. Open it and tap the Live Text button to copy, translate or look up text, or tap a quick action to call a number or convert a currency.
Utilities collections. Under Collections > Utilities, Photos groups some content for you, including receipts, QR codes and identity documents.
Spotlight and Mac. Since iOS 15, Spotlight on iPhone has used Live Text to find text in photos, and Photos on Mac can search for text within photos "to quickly find receipts, documents, and more."

Step-by-step guides: search text inside screenshots on iPhone, copy text from a screenshot and search text inside screenshots on Mac.

Where does a screenshot organizer fit?

Visual Intelligence is about the screenshot you just took; an organizer is about the thousands you already have. Pizazoo is one (full disclosure: we make Pizazoo), and it does not depend on Apple Intelligence:

iPhone and iPad, free, iOS 17 or later. It sorts the screenshots already in your photo library into categories such as Receipts, Chats, Travel, Code and Errors, and indexes the text in each one with on-device OCR, on iPhones with or without Apple Intelligence. Results also appear in iOS Spotlight.
Mac, macOS 14 or later, Apple Silicon and Intel. It imports new screenshots from your screenshot folder automatically and makes their text searchable.
On the device. OCR and categorization run on your device. There is no account and no Pizazoo server.

Use both: Visual Intelligence in the moment, an organizer for the backlog. For what Photos itself now does, see Is the iOS 27 Photos app enough for your screenshots?

Get Pizazoo for iPhone on the App Store or download Pizazoo for Mac.