IOS18 doesn't find photos by caption or date (day, month and year).

I teach photo management and organization. For years I've been teaching students how to put specific words, emojis and phrases in the "Add a Caption" field so that they can easily search and re-find these images. The updated search with ios18 was NOT an improvement for using this type of image "tagging" as now search brings up so many random results. Before 18 Photos would at least sort results into sections, so I could find results matched in the caption field.

I would LOVE this to be fixed!

Dude. Apple needs to fix this NOW. I am so upset with this update. I hate it so much. I am gonna stop using my iPhone if they don't fix this. I hate the fact you can't search by caption anymore because I REFUSE TO HAVE TO SCROLL THROUGH A MILLION PHOTOS TO TRY TO FIND ONE SPECIFIC PHOTO. And in Messages, sometimes IT WON'T LET ME SEARCH MESSAGES BY KEYWORD!!!! When I put a word in the search box in messages, sometimes it will just show me links and pictures featuring that keyword AND NOT MESSAGES WITH THAT WORD. This update is GARBAGE and needs to be reverted!

Agree. I also have been teaching people how to do this for years and it’s been a crucial strategy especially for video, which has no searchable text in a photo.

I take a lot of videos of weightlifting sets and other sports things for training purposes. there’s no way to know by looking at a video how much weight is on the bar.

I meticulously go through each video after a training session to add to the caption the lift, the load, and the reps. Or for my circus training, I write the skill name and relevant notes.

This helps me find the relevant videos so I can create highlight reels or compare a specific load/skill at different points of time.

I also include relevant notes in the caption filed or emojis for PRs

A search for “deadlift 185” used to show me a section in results sorted by caption so I could see what was what. Also so I could see where I used “deadlift” vs “deadlifts” - in which case I’d go back to make them consistent

now I can’t see the captions or dates in search results which means I have to tap on each video to check what it is and when it is.

Please bring this back to photos search results.

Also I’ll add that because the captions don’t transfer to other services like Google photos, I’ve invested to expand my iCloud storage to keep them all in iCloud.

If I can’t search by caption, there’s no incentive for me to keep my photos and videos in iCloud. I might as well move them to another service.

Has Apple ever responded or even acknowledged this problem? I, too, use the captions feature on Photos all day long, and have meticulously labelled thousands of photos with captions for quickly finding the exact photos I need based on the exact “captions” drop-down feature in the search results. I have shown many people in my business community this feature … and now it’s been rendered totally useless. I have the same Photos app on Ipad with Ios18 and on my phone with Ios17 … I refused to upgrade to Ios18 on my phone (which of course Apple wants me to do). The captions search results feature still works flawlessly on iphone w/ previous release, but the upgraded Ipad is a jumbled mess now. The search results do not show any captions results so now i have to manually sort through 100’s of photos to find something I took the time to label. Why in the world did Apple take such a basic, and intuitively simple feature and ruin it?

It’s ridiculous! Why have a caption option if you can’t search it!!!

When will Apple restore SEARCH PHOTOS BY CAPTION?

I have filled out feedback to them directly in the feedback link for the Photos app. But unfortunately they don’t respond directly to feedback submissions. But they do read these discussion forums. Man … I sure hope this gets fixed in the next release. The ability to see “Captions Results” in the search drop-down was one of the coolest features. I still have release 17 on my iphone thankfully and it works flawlessly. On my Ipad, it does not work at all. Taking the time to enter Captions in the “info” button is now rendered useless as you can’t search for them or see the results of what you took the time to enter.

I’m glad I’m not alone but this is brutal…I started using captions a couple years ago and have spent a lot of time organizing my photos with them. Now, I search a keyword that I know is in my caption, and it might not even show up. I’ve noticed that if I search the first word of the caption, it normally finds it, but if I search a diff word, it misses it completely.

Really, REALLY disappointing and I hope Apple fixes this soon.

Hello, I have an iPhone 16 pro and I’ve been having a mixed experience with photo search. On one hand I can’t search for a photo I know I have of my daughter in a red dress by typing “red”, “dress” or even her name “Scarlett” etc. on the other hand I could find a random specific photo of me by typing “reading a book”. I hope this issue is fixed with the next update. The bones are there they just need to be tweaked a bit. I was able to find photos by searching dates both in the 00/00/0000 and spelling it out July 00 2023. Hope your mess gets fixed soon.

Totally agree. These features need to return ASAP!

This is very frustrating. I find the "smart" searches to be mostly useless which is why I tediously add informative captions and filenames to all my photos so that they can be quickly referenced. This update basically nullified years of work organizing my library

Momm1m1lkjuggz wrote: … I can’t search for a photo I know I have of my daughter in a red dress by typing “red”, “dress”

I did a search for Red Dress and got this:

Lots of red dresses. I wonder if you waited long enough for Photos to complete the scans.

On the other hand, Caption only works if you include the first words in the caption, which is weird and nearly useless.

Speaking of counter productive, ranting on here does no one any good. But what would help is if someone suggested that you let Apple know, here:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

Unfortunately it doesn’t help with the thousands of pics I have already tagged for work purposes.

This is the worst update. Everything I’ve organised like important document, plans, job specific photos all gone. Not an improvement. Whose idea was this. What’s the point of a caption now.