Early last week, a friend visiting my apartment for the first time was fascinated by some of the plants on my windowsill. He is generally familiar with the flora and fauna, but he could not recognize these particular varieties. So he took out his phone and took some pictures.

I quickly asked which plant identification app he preferred to use under such circumstances. There are plenty of such deals on the App Store, and I’ve tried a few myself. More recently, I had taken a liking to iNaturalistwhich allows community members to tag plant photos submitted by other users.

My friend was puzzled. “What do you mean ‘which app’? I just use the Photos app.”

He showed me what he meant by that, and the process made a bell ring in the back of my head. Apple introduced the feature – called Visual Look Up – with iOS 15 late last year. I just hadn’t thought about it since.

This is one of those features that iOS doesn’t feature. You won’t even notice it if you don’t know where to find it. And now you will.

Take a picture

The first step is exactly what you imagine. Take a photo of the plant in question, well lit if possible. In fact, go ahead and grab a few – it’ll improve Siri’s chances of finding a match for you. (You can also use older images you’ve taken or even ones you’ve found on the internet.)

Check the cute little icon

Head to the Photos app and open your image. You will know that part of a photo can be identified if the small information icon (i) has a few stars above it. I choose to believe that Apple means this to indicate that there is magic in the works.

If the icon is just an (i) with no stars, Siri couldn’t find anything identifiable in your photo. It’s time to go back to the first step.

Let Siri do the heavy lifting

Click that magic info icon and Photos will present you with a bunch of metadata. This can include everything from the type of device the photo was taken on to its resolution and where exactly it was taken.

What you are looking for is the option that offers to “Search” for anything you hope to search for. In this case, it would be a plant. You can either click “Search” or the leaf icon that appears on the photo itself.

Siri will run through its knowledge (there’s a lot of it) and let you know if any matches come up. Sometimes the application will show more than one possible match; it will also populate similar images under its guesses.

Click on any of the matches to read the factory’s Wikipedia page. You are now one step closer to being a factory master.

Use it on everything

Visual Look Up is super simple to use, once you know where to look for it. It doesn’t just specialize in plants either: you can also use the feature to identify animals. Siri will even guess a dog’s breed if given the chance. (Try a dog for a fun little game.)

Currently, Visual Look Up is available in English in the United States, Canada, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom; in French in France; in Italian in Italy; and in Spanish in Spain, Mexico and the United States