PcFixin'

How to Turn Off Enhanced Visual Search on a Mac

By PcFixin' · July 19, 2026 · Mac · Mac, Photos, Privacy

Disable encrypted landmark-search requests in Photos without deleting, moving, or changing the pictures stored in your library.

What Enhanced Visual Search does

Enhanced Visual Search is a Photos feature introduced with macOS Sequoia. It helps you find pictures and videos containing landmarks or points of interest, even when the files do not include saved location information. For example, you could search for the Golden Gate Bridge and find photos in which the bridge is visible.

Your Mac first examines a possible landmark on the device. It then creates an “embedding,” which is a low-detail mathematical description rather than a copy of the photograph. That encrypted description is sent to Apple and compared with a much larger landmark database.

Apple says the photographs and videos themselves are not sent as part of this process. Even so, you may prefer that Photos send no encrypted image-search information to Apple. The switch below gives you that choice.

Before you begin

These directions assume your Mac is running macOS Sequoia 15 or later. The setting is inside the Photos app, not the Mac’s main System Settings app. That small distinction is where many people get stuck.

Turning off Enhanced Visual Search does not erase photographs, remove albums, or disable your Photos library. It only turns off the enhanced landmark-matching feature. If you use iCloud Photos, this switch does not turn off iCloud Photos or remove pictures already stored in iCloud.

Turn off Enhanced Visual Search

You will be changing one checkbox. A checkbox is the small square beside a setting. When it contains a checkmark, the option is on. When the square is empty, the option is off.

1. Open the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click Photos in the menu bar at the very top of the screen.
3. Click Settings in the Photos menu.
4. Click General at the top of the Settings window.
5. Click the checked box beside Enhanced Visual Search to remove the checkmark.
6. Close the Settings window by clicking the red button in its upper-left corner.

How to confirm that it is off

Open Photos settings again and return to the General section. The square beside Enhanced Visual Search should be empty. There is no separate Save or Apply button. Photos keeps the change automatically, so you do not need to restart your Mac.

Your existing library should look exactly as it did before. Your photos, videos, folders, and albums stay in place. The main difference is that searches relying on Apple’s server-based landmark index may no longer produce the same results.

1. Check that the box beside Enhanced Visual Search is empty.

If you cannot find the setting

Do not worry if Enhanced Visual Search is missing. Apple says the feature began with macOS Sequoia and is not available in every country or region. A missing option can therefore mean that your version of macOS or your region does not support it.

You can check your macOS version from the Apple menu. The Apple menu is the Apple-shaped icon in the upper-left corner of the screen.

1. Click the Apple menu in the upper-left corner of the screen.
2. Click About This Mac.
3. Read the macOS name and version shown in the window.

How to turn it back on later

This choice is not permanent. If you decide that landmark searching is useful, return to the same General settings in Photos and select the checkbox again. Selecting it means placing the checkmark back in the box.

That is the whole job. You have adjusted a fairly hidden privacy setting without disturbing a single picture—a small but satisfying bit of Mac housekeeping.

1. Select the box beside Enhanced Visual Search whenever you want to enable the feature again.

Bottom line

Open Photos > Settings > General, then remove the checkmark beside Enhanced Visual Search. Your local photo library remains intact, while Photos stops using Apple’s server-based landmark-matching process.