Siri can't search photos anymore

[Morac]

I'm not sure when this broke exactly, but Siri can't search for photos any more. You used to be able to ask for something like "Show my photos from last month" and Siri would show you photos in your photo album from last month. Now when I do that Siri shows me photos from last month on the web using Bing search for some reason even though I don't have Bing set as my search engine.

It does this on my iPad Pro, iPad Air 2, iPhone and Mac. All are on either iOS 15.1 or Monterey (Mac). Since it's happening for all of them this is either a bug or change on how Siri works.

Has anyone else noticed this or know when it last worked?

 

[Fraserpatty]

Still no answer? Cause I have the same problem…only what she does is open photos app to the last photo or album I was on. No searching any longer. For someone like me with over 9000 photos that was handy.

 

[BBDDVV]

iOS 15.3
1. I can't get pictures through Siri from specific dates/periods in time (regardless of the language Siri is set to)
2. with Siri in English on iPad, I can get pictures of e.g. dogs in my photo library
3. with Siri in Dutch on iPhone, I cannot get picture of e.g. dogs in my photo library, it just shows results in Safari.
Double checked, in both cases Siri has full access to the Photos app

Note: doing the search in the Photos app directly works flawlessly...

 

[Fraserpatty]

I can’t get it to work in the photos app either. This was such a handy feature. I wish Apple would concentrate more on making Siri fabulous. If nothing else, once she has a feature, let her keep it. I don’t know why they keep going away…

 

[cynics]

Odd. Mine acts like its going to work on both iOS and MacOS..it will open the photos app but then just stop. Tried dates people, random things.

 

[Morac]

Odd. Mine acts like its going to work on both iOS and MacOS..it will open the photos app but then just stop. Tried dates people, random things.

I can get it to do that if I say “show my photos from …” rather than “show photos from”, but like you said, that just opens the photos app. It doesn’t actually search.

 

[Fraserpatty]

I would really like to know if Apple intends to put that feature back. I remember seeing them demonstrate it on the Keynote the year it came out. They knew then how valuable it was. Why take it away?

 

[Morac]

I would really like to know if Apple intends to put that feature back. I remember seeing them demonstrate it on the Keynote the year it came out. They knew then how valuable it was. Why take it away?

I’m convinced they don’t know it’s broken. For example look at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206993

Of the 13 things they list you can do with Siri, 4 don’t work.

 

[Slartibart]

I’m convinced they don’t know it’s broken. For example look at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206993

Of the 13 things they list you can do with Siri, 4 don’t work.

here is the link to the iPadOS feedback page. Everyone please report. ?

 

[Fraserpatty]

done.

 

[skydivertak]

So I tested variations on searching from different places. First Siri as was mentioned “find my photos October 2021”. Every time it just opened Photos with no search.

I tried Shortcuts (hoping there was a work around) and there is no option to simply search by date using a phrase like “October 2021” that I could see. Perhaps someone could see if there is an easy way to do this. Maybe Siri has a problem doing this too?

From Home Screen I searched “October” and it came up with Photos and and option to see more results. On my iPhone 11 it split into two searches, one for Text results in Photos and one for Photos from October.

When I searched “October 2021” it only gave me the option to search results in photos, but it correctly opened Photos with the search results opened.

So perhaps there is an issue with Siri because of this option missing in Siri Shortcuts? Either way, reporting it as a long time issue with both Shortcuts and Siri Search.