What Is Visual Look Up in macOS 13 and How to Use It

Visual Look Up is an intelligent image recognition feature built directly into macOS 13 Ventura that allows users to identify objects, landmarks, plants, pets, and artwork within their media. This article explains what Visual Look Up is, how the underlying technology functions, and the exact steps required to use it across various native Mac applications, including Safari, Photos, and Preview.

What Is Visual Look Up?

Visual Look Up is an artificial intelligence-driven feature that analyzes visual data in your images and paused video frames. Powered by Apple's on-device Neural Engine and machine learning algorithms, it recognizes specific subjects and cross-references them with knowledge from Siri and the web to provide relevant information without requiring third-party tools. In macOS 13, the feature expands to recognize birds, insects, and statues, and adds the ability to isolate and lift subjects directly from backgrounds.

How Visual Look Up Works

When you view an image in macOS 13, the operating system's vision framework scans the visual contents locally on your device. If the system detects a recognizable subject—such as a specific dog breed, a popular tourist destination, or a species of flower—it flags the item and displays a sparkle icon over the standard Info button. Because the processing occurs on-device, your photos remain private and are not uploaded to external servers for identification.

How to Use Visual Look Up on macOS 13

You can access Visual Look Up across several native apps, including Photos, Safari, Preview, and Quick Look.

Using Visual Look Up in Photos and Preview

  1. Open the Photos or Preview app on your Mac.
  2. Select an image containing a common object, animal, landmark, or plant.
  3. Look at the toolbar for the Info (i) button. If Visual Look Up detects an object, a small star or sparkle will appear on the icon.
  4. Click the Info button, or press Command + I.
  5. Click the small icon that appears over the image thumbnail (such as a paw print for animals or a leaf for plants) to open the Look Up pane containing detailed information, web results, and Wikipedia articles.

Using Visual Look Up in Safari and Across the Web

  1. While browsing in Safari, locate an image of an object or landmark.
  2. Right-click (or Control-click) on the image.
  3. Select Look Up from the contextual menu.
  4. A card will pop up displaying the identified subject alongside Siri Knowledge and related visual matches.

Isolating Subjects from Backgrounds

macOS 13 also leverages Visual Look Up technology to separate subjects from their backgrounds:

  1. Open an image in Photos, Safari, or Quick Look.
  2. Right-click on the primary subject of the photo.
  3. Select Copy Subject.
  4. Paste the isolated subject without its background into Messages, Mail, Notes, or image-editing software. Alternatively, you can click and drag the subject directly out of the window into another app.

Requirements

Visual Look Up in macOS 13 requires a Mac capable of running macOS Ventura. While basic image lookup works across supported Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, advanced features—such as lifting subjects from backgrounds and analyzing paused video frames—require a Mac equipped with an Apple Silicon chip (M1 or later) to utilize the dedicated Neural Engine.