Siri AI can find relevant answers to what you’re looking for just by asking. For example, you can search for a photo from years ago, easily locate an email buried in your inbox, or ask about something mentioned in a Messages conversation. In this article, I’ll show you how you can use Siri AI to search Your Messages, Mail and Photos.
This upgraded phone search does what the likes of Claude and ChatGPT can’t because Siri AI is built into your iPhone. In fact, it can take several days for Siri AI to index and optimize its search across everything on your phone. Apple suggests keeping your phone plugged in to charge longer to speed up this often lengthy process.
See also: Why Siri AI Can’t Answer Questions About Your Photos Yet
Searching Photos with Siri AI
Natural language photo searches have been a part of Google’s offerings since 2024, though the initial release was unreliable. Meanwhile, Apple’s take lets you use Siri AI to describe visual details to find photos in your library.
You could ask Siri AI, "Hey Siri, find that photo of me holding a wine glass at a winery." The assistant will then populate a variety of images that fit that description.
The exact photo you’re looking for may not be at the top of the grid but it’ll be much easier to sort through a subsect of your library than trying to remember what day or month you went tasting in wine country.
Searching Mail with Siri AI
Apple also touted improvements to Mail Search, an app that I use daily, which has always been a bit lackluster in that regard, especially when compared with Gmail. I do find it improved in iOS 27, even though I do have an inbox of more than 144,000 messages going back nearly 25 years. I have mostly been able to locate emails, even obscure and old ones, within a relatively short amount of time, which is definitely a nice improvement.
I saw a post on Mastodon about a book on Doctor Who, so I asked Siri AI if I had preordered it already. It showed me the email confirming that I had, back in November.
Of course, Siri AI is not perfect. I asked Siri to find an email from one of my PR contacts. It wasn’t able to do that, but it did find when said contact sent me an iMessage.
I also found I had to ensure I was using the built-in Mail app, not Gmail (my main email app), for Siri to unearth delivery messages and updates. Hopefully, third-party app compatibility will improve in time.
Searching Messages with Siri AI
Siri AI is also good at digging up specific Messages conversations. For example, I was preparing for a group breakfast and asked what I said I was going to make. It referenced a text in a group chat (from me!) with plans for chocolate chip banana pancakes and hash brown casserole. I asked which casserole recipe we had decided on, and it showed me right away. (Don’t forget to thaw the potatoes the night before!)
Like any LLM-based chatbot, Siri AI sometimes misunderstands or gives confidently wrong answers. For example, when I asked it about when my neighbor said they’d be back from vacation, it found the relevant text message but said that no return date had been mentioned, despite the fact that it was right there in the message.
Siri AI is designed to be more conversational and more aware of what’s happening across your devices. It can understand context, perform more complex actions, and help you get things done without constantly switching between apps.
If you’re used to ChatGPT and similar chatbots, you’ll feel right at home texting or voice chatting with Siri AI.
