I wanted to find photos from my vacation a couple of weeks ago, so I figured I’d try out Siri’s new iOS 9 functionality.
“Siri,” I said, “show me photos from Hawaii.”
Dutifully, Apple’s updated digital assistant pulled up photos from my trip to Oahu a couple of years ago. They’re lovely, but I wanted more recent pictures.
“Siri, show me photos from Hawaii last week,” I said, reasonably.
As soon as I finished speaking, there they were. Siri had launched my Photos app on my iPhone and brought up the photos I’d taken while in Kona. Great stuff.
Here are some other ways you can get Siri to find the photos you want in the huge pile you have sitting on your iPhone.
You can ask Siri for specific times, as well. “Show me photos from August of 2013,” for example, showed me a lovely picture of some food I had two years ago.
“Show me photos from Los Angeles” displayed all the images I took while at a gaming conference in LA this past June. They’re pretty great.
It all seems to work by plugging in your terms into Photos’ Search field, which has been supercharged, too, with new suggested searches like “Nearby,” “One Year Ago,” “Favorites,” and “Home,” a search that shows me all the photos taken from my house.
Better yet, if you’re feeling egocentric, try this one: “Siri, show me my selfies.” Because iOS 9 collects all your face pics into an album called Selfies, you’ll get a great bunch of shots of you making duck lips.
Sometimes, Siri might search the web for photos that match your search terms if it can’t find something in your own Photo library. If so, try altering your search term to include “my,” as in, “Show me all my photos from Chattanooga.” You should have better luck that way.
Additional reporting by Evan Killham
