🔎 Reverse Image Search
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Photo Sherlock is a free iPhone app that runs a reverse image search on any photo you give it. If you have ever wanted to check a photo on your iPhone without opening a desktop browser, this is one of the simplest ways to do it. This guide shows you how to install it, how to search, and how to read the results.
Photo Sherlock is a free iPhone app that searches any photo with Google, Yandex and Bing. You pick a picture from your camera or gallery, crop it to the subject, and the app opens the matching results in its built-in browser. It costs nothing to start, and a one-time $1.99 Pro upgrade removes the ads.
The app is a small, focused tool. It does not try to identify objects with artificial intelligence, and it does not keep its own database of images. Instead, it sends your photo to the big image search engines and shows you what they find. That simple design is also its main strength: you get three engines in one place, and you can switch between them in seconds. This guide walks through the whole process, compares the three engines on the same photo, and ends with a straight comparison against Reversee, the other iPhone app that does the same job.
What Is Photo Sherlock?
Photo Sherlock is a reverse image search app for iPhone and iPad. You give it a photo from your camera or your gallery, and it searches the web for that photo and for visually similar photos. According to its App Store listing, the app can find information about a photo on the internet in a few taps, including the real owner of a photo from a social network and whether a photo is fake.
The app is free to download, with a single one-time Pro upgrade of $1.99. According to its App Store listing, Photo Sherlock holds a 4.7-star rating from 3,800 ratings, which is high for a small utility app. The app is sold by Ihor Prysiazhniuk, takes up 47.4 MB, and requires iOS 12.0 or later, so it runs on almost any iPhone still in use. It is also available on Android, where Google Play lists it at 3.9 stars from 53,900 reviews, updated on 20 March 2026.
The app is built for three everyday jobs. First, checking a photo you did not take: a profile picture from a dating app, a seller’s photo in a listing, or an image someone sent you. Second, finding the original or a better-quality version of a photo you already have. Third, finding products and clothes from a photo, which works the same way as the shopping searches in our full guide to how to reverse image search on any device.
One warning belongs here before anything else. A visual match is not proof of identity. If Photo Sherlock finds the same face on another profile, that tells you the photo is used elsewhere, not that the person in front of you is who that profile says they are. Only search photos you have a good reason to check, and never use a match to harass, threaten or expose someone.
How Do I Install Photo Sherlock on iPhone?
Installing the app takes about a minute. There is no account to create and no setup wizard to work through.
- Open the App Store on your iPhone and search for “Photo Sherlock”. Make sure you pick the app called “Photo Sherlock search by image”, sold by Ihor Prysiazhniuk, so you do not install a copycat. You can also open it directly from Photo Sherlock on the App Store.
- Tap Get. The app is free, and it downloads at 47.4 MB, so it will install quickly even on a slow connection.
- Open the app. The first time you choose a photo from your gallery, iOS asks whether the app may access your photos. Tap “Allow Access to All Photos” if you want to search any picture in your library, or “Select Photos” if you would rather share only a few.
- That is the whole setup. There is no sign-in screen and no profile to fill in before your first search.
The free version shows adverts between searches. The Pro upgrade costs $1.99 as a one-off payment, and it removes the adverts and lets you open a search result’s direct link in your own browser instead of the app’s built-in one. You do not need Pro to search. Every engine and every feature in the steps below works in the free version.
The app needs iOS 12.0 or later, according to Apple’s listing, so it runs on iPhones going back many years. It also runs on iPad with the same steps. If you are on Android instead, the same app is on Google Play under the same name, with the same features.
How Do I Search by Image with Photo Sherlock?
A search in the app follows the same six steps every time. Once you have done it once, the whole thing takes under a minute.
- Open the app and tap the camera icon to take a new photo, or tap the gallery icon to choose one you already have. The app’s own camera is a simple custom camera built for quick shots, so use it when the thing you want to search is in front of you.
- Choose your photo. If you picked from the gallery, you can scroll through your recent photos and tap the one you want.
- Crop the photo to the subject. Drag the edges of the crop box until only the thing you want to identify is inside it, then confirm. This is the step most people skip, and it is the one that matters most. The next section explains why.
- Rotate the photo if it is sideways. The app has a rotate control in the same editing screen, so fix the orientation before you search rather than after.
- Pick a search engine and tap search. The app sends your photo to the engine and opens the results in its built-in browser, where you can move backwards and forwards and reload the page like a normal browser.
- Read the results. Look for the original page the photo came from, a higher-quality version of the same photo, or pages selling the same item. If the first engine finds nothing useful, switch to another engine and run the same cropped photo again.
The app reduces the size of your image automatically before it sends it, which the listing says is done to provide a fast search experience. That is helpful on mobile data, but it also means a very small or heavily compressed photo can return weaker matches. Start with the best-quality copy of the photo you have, and let the app handle the resizing.
If you want the results in Safari or Chrome instead of the app’s built-in browser, that is a Pro feature. In the free version you read results inside Photo Sherlock, which is fine for a quick check, but copying a link out of it takes an extra tap.
Why Should I Crop the Photo Before Searching?
Cropping is the single best way to improve a reverse image search, in Photo Sherlock and in every other tool. Search engines match the whole image you send them, not just the interesting part. If your photo shows a jacket on a person standing in a busy street, the engine tries to match the person, the street and the jacket all at once, and the results drift towards whichever part is most distinctive. Crop to the jacket alone, and every result is about the jacket.
The app makes cropping easy because it is built into the search flow. After you pick a photo, the crop screen appears before the search runs, so you never have to open a second app to prepare the image. Drag the corners in tight around the subject, and cut out anything that is not part of it: hands, price tags, shop signs, borders and the phone’s own interface if the photo is a screenshot.
Three cropping rules cover almost every case. First, fill the frame with the subject. A jacket that covers a tenth of the photo will match worse than the same jacket cropped to fill the frame. Second, keep the subject whole. Cutting off a shoe’s heel or a label’s corner removes the very detail that identifies it, so crop close but not through the object. Third, crop out text and watermarks where you can. A big watermark across a photo confuses the match, and a shop name in the corner can pull results towards that shop instead of the item.
Screenshots deserve special attention. If you saved a photo from Instagram, a listing or a chat, the screenshot usually includes usernames, buttons and borders around the real photo. Crop all of that away before you search. The app’s own listing gives this as a typical use case: searching by photo in social networks such as Instagram and Facebook, where the photo you want is almost always wrapped in interface you do not want.
What Do Google, Yandex and Bing Each Find?
The app searches with Google, Yandex and Bing, and the three engines do not return the same answers. Running the same cropped photo through all three is the closest thing to a complete search you can do on an iPhone, and it is worth doing whenever the first engine comes up short. Here is the same photo, a public picture of an Air Jordan 1 High in the Chicago colourway, the same product photo we used as the worked example in our Mercari image search guide, run through each engine in turn.
Start with Google. Google reverse image search has the broadest index of the three, and it is usually the best first try for products. With the trainer photo cropped tight to the shoe, Google returns the product pages and shop listings for the same model, plus visually similar trainers. If you are trying to find where to buy something, or what a thing is called, Google is where you start.
Then try Yandex. Yandex is often stronger than Google on photos that Google misses, especially faces, older photos and images from marketplaces outside the English-speaking web. With the same cropped trainer photo, Yandex tends to surface the shoe from resale listings and image boards that do not rank highly on Google. If Google gives you only the official product page, Yandex is the engine most likely to find the listing, the forum post or the older copy.
Then try Bing. Bing’s visual search is good at similar images and shopping results, and it sometimes finds a match the other two miss, particularly for products sold on large retail sites. The app’s own store listing carries a disclaimer that the app is not affiliated with Bing, which is a reminder that the app is only a bridge to the engine, not part of it. Run Bing last, and treat its results as a second opinion rather than the deciding vote.
Three honest limits apply to every engine. First, no engine promises a result. Reversee, the rival app compared below, says this plainly on its own listing: the search is made by third-party engines, and none of them covers 100% of searches. Second, your exact results will differ from anyone else’s. The same photo can return different top matches on different days as pages are indexed and removed. Third, a match is a lead, not a verdict. If the engines say a photo appears on ten sites, open the earliest and most trustworthy one before you act on it. For checking when and where a photo first appeared, Google About this image is a useful next step after Photo Sherlock gives you the match.
Photo Sherlock vs Reversee: Which iPhone App Should You Pick?
Reversee is the other iPhone app that does this job, and it is the subject of our next guide in this series. Both apps are free, both send your photo to Google, Yandex and Bing, and both let you crop before you search. The differences are in the details: price, which engines are free, whether the app works from inside other apps, and what data it collects. This table compares them on the facts from their own App Store listings, checked on 8 November 2026.
| Feature | Photo Sherlock | Reversee |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, Pro $1.99 once | Free, PRO $3.99 |
| Free engines | Google, Yandex, Bing | Google only |
| Paid engines | None, all are free | Bing and Yandex ($1.99) |
| iOS extension | No | Yes, in Photos and Safari |
| Batch page search | No | Yes, all images on a page |
| Auto crop | No, manual crop only | Yes, in Pro |
| Data collected | Tracks location and identifiers | None collected |
| Last update | Version 1.84 | Version 5.3.9, 3 Oct 2023 |
| App Store rating | 4.7 stars, 3,800 ratings | 4.4 stars, 13,000 ratings |
| Best for | Quick multi-engine checks | Searching from other apps |
The decision is simple. Pick Photo Sherlock if you want all three engines without paying, and you are happy to open the app and search from inside it. Its one-time $1.99 Pro upgrade is also cheaper than Reversee’s $3.99 PRO, and its 4.7-star rating from 3,800 ratings is higher than Reversee’s 4.4 stars from 13,000 ratings, according to their App Store listings. Pick Reversee on the App Store if you search from inside Photos or Safari all day, because its iOS extension lets you start a search without opening the app at all, and if you want the batch search that collects every image on a web page in one go. Reversee’s listing also states that the developer does not collect any data from the app, which is a real privacy advantage over Photo Sherlock, and worth weighing if you search sensitive photos.
There is one honest warning about Reversee. Its App Store listing shows the last update as version 5.3.9 on 3 October 2023, which is more than three years ago. The app still works, and its Google fix in that update is still the current version, but an app that has not been updated since 2023 can break when Apple or Google change something. The app’s Android listing was updated on 20 March 2026, which suggests its developer is still maintaining it. If you install Reversee, check it still works after each iOS update, and keep Photo Sherlock installed as the backup.
Both apps are closer to each other than either is to Google Lens. Lens is built into the Google app, identifies objects itself and keeps improving, while Photo Sherlock and Reversee are simple bridges to the search engines. If you want identification and shopping results in one place, Lens is still the stronger tool, and our CamFind guide covers another dedicated visual search app for comparison. But if you want to check the same photo against three engines in under a minute, Photo Sherlock is the quickest way to do it on an iPhone.
Is Photo Sherlock Safe and Private?
The app is safe to install, but you should know what it collects before you search a sensitive photo. Apple’s App Store privacy labels for the app state that it may use Location, Identifiers, Usage Data and Diagnostics to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies, and that the same four types of data may be collected and linked to your identity. User Content and Diagnostics may also be collected without being linked to you. That is a heavier data footprint than most search apps: by comparison, Reversee’s listing states that its developer collects no data at all.
In practice, this means two things. First, do not search private photos you would not want associated with your device, such as identity documents or intimate images. Use your iPhone’s built-in tools or a browser-based search instead for anything sensitive. Second, the free version shows adverts, and advertising is part of why the tracking exists. If the data collection bothers you, the $1.99 Pro upgrade removes the adverts, though it does not change the privacy labels.
The app’s age rating is 16+, and its listing warns that it contains unrestricted web access, advertising and user-generated content. That fits: a reverse image search can return anything on the open web, including adult content, so it is not an app to hand to a child unsupervised. For checking a photo of a person, the same consent and safety rules apply as with any face search tool. A match shows where a photo appears, not who a person is, and searching someone’s photo without a good reason can be harassment even when the app makes it easy.
On the technical side, the app does what its listing promises. It does not ask for an account, it does not need your contacts or your location to search, and the photo you send goes to the search engine you picked, not to Photo Sherlock’s own servers. If a search returns nothing, the fix is almost always the photo, not the app: crop tighter, use a sharper copy, and try another engine before you conclude the photo is not online.
FAQs
Is Photo Sherlock free?
Yes. The app is free to download and free to search with, and all three engines, Google, Yandex and Bing, work in the free version. The only paid extra is a one-time $1.99 Pro upgrade, which removes the adverts and lets you open a result’s direct link in your own browser instead of the app’s built-in one.
Which search engines does Photo Sherlock use?
The app searches with Google, Yandex and Bing. You pick an engine, the app sends your cropped photo to it, and the results open in the app’s built-in browser. Google is usually best for products, Yandex is often stronger on photos Google misses, and Bing adds similar images and shopping results as a useful second opinion.
Can Photo Sherlock find someone from a photo?
It can find web pages where the same photo appears, which sometimes includes a social profile, but a visual match is not proof of identity. The photo may be stolen, reused or years old. Use a match as a starting point, check the original page, and never use the result to harass, threaten or expose the person in the photo.
Is Photo Sherlock better than Reversee?
The app is better if you want Google, Yandex and Bing free, with a cheaper one-time $1.99 Pro upgrade and a higher 4.7-star rating. Reversee is better if you search from inside Photos or Safari, thanks to its iOS extension, and it collects no data at all. Keep both installed and use Photo Sherlock first.
