Apple announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9 that the next version of the iPhone operating system is called iOS 26. The tech giant said iOS 26 will bring a transparent glass design to icons and menus, the Camera and Photos apps will get redesigned interfaces and much more to iPhones. But when Apple released iOS 18 in September 2024, it included a feature called Enhanced Visual Search, and some people online have voiced privacy concerns about the feature.

Read more: Everything You Need to Know About iOS 18

Enhanced Visual Search sends photo data from your iPhone to an Apple servers in an effort to help you better find pictures in your photo library. It’s turned on by default, but you can turn the feature off in a few easy steps if you’re worried about privacy. Here’s what you need to know about Enhanced Visual Search and how to disable to feature if you want.

Enhanced Visual Search privacy measures

“Enhanced Visual Search in Photos allows you to search for photos using landmarks or points of interest,” Apple wrote online. “Your device privately matches places in your photos to a global index Apple maintains on our servers.”

According to an Apple research post, parts of a photo that might contain a landmark are encrypted then sent out to an Apple server, so the whole picture is not sent. Your encrypted data is also one point among other pieces of junk data not associated with any of your, or anyone else’s, images.

Once Apple server receives the data, it won’t decrypt the data. It only works with the encrypted data. If the server establishes whether or not the encrypted photo data contains a corresponding landmark, the server then sends your device an encrypted response, which your device then decrypts.

The company also wrote in the post that it uses a third-party-operated Oblivious HTTP relay to hide the IP address of your data. And each time your iPhone sends photo data to a server the data is given a new IP address.

But some people have questioned if this is enough to protect your data. “If my computer sends data to the manufacturer of the computer, then it’s not private, or at least not entirely private,” developer Jeff Johnson wrote online. “A software bug would be sufficient to make users vulnerable, and Apple can’t guarantee that their software includes no bugs.”

If you are concerned about Enhanced Visual Search sending your photo data to Apple’s servers, here’s how to turn the feature off. It’s important to note that if you have an iCloud account to store photos or backup your iPhone data, your photos are still going to Apple’s servers. Turning this feature off won’t stop that.

How to disable Enhanced Visual Search

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Apps.
3. Tap Photos.
4. Tap the toggle next to Enhanced Visual Search.

Now your iPhone won’t send encrypted photo data to an Apple server to help you find pictures on your iPhone. That also means searching for pictures on your iPhone could likely suffer. If you want to turn the feature back on, follow the steps above.

For more on iOS 18, here’s what you need to know about iOS 18.5 and iOS 18.4. You can also check out our iOS 18 cheat sheet and everything to know about iOS 26.