I’ve been using my iPhone as a real-life Pokédex to scan every bug in my garden this summer

(Image credit: Tom's Guide) We’ve all been there: you spot a bizarre, brightly colored bug crawling on your tomato plants or a strange, furry moth hovering near your flowers, and you want to know what it is right now. But rather than typing desperate, vague descriptions into a Google search bar, there’s a much faster way to decode your backyard.Hidden directly inside your iPhone's standard Photos app is a remarkably powerful machine learning tool that turns your camera roll into an instant nature scanner.I’ve spent the last week or so pointing my camera at every leaf and brick wall in my yard to see just how accurate this built-in feature really is. Here is how to find the button on your phone, and the wildest garden bugs it's helped me identify so far this summer.How the feature works The next time you snap a crisp close-up of a creature or plant, simply open that image in your Photos and look closely at the action bar running along the bottom of the screen.If your iPhone recognizes a subject in the frame, the standard information circle icon will automatically transform, signalling that Visual Look Up is ready. Tap that, then hold the answer to have Siri pull up more information about your snapped subject. (Image credit: Kaycee Hill / Tom's Guide)The best part about this is that it isn't just a dead end. Once Siri identifies the insect, you don't have to stop there. Because iOS now supports conversational continuity, you can actually get into a back-and-forth chat with Siri about the specific thing you’ve found.You can ask follow-up questions like whether it's dangerous to your tomato plants, what its lifespan is, or how to encourage more of them to visit, allowing you to learn much more without ever leaving your photo library.Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips.Identifying my garden neighbours Once you know how to trigger it, your photo library essentially becomes a real-life Pokédex. I’ve spent the summer pointing my lens at the grass and garden walls to see how many 'rare spawns' I could find, and I’ve cataloged a bizarrely brilliant cast of characters that I used to walk right past.My absolute favorite find was a frantic, hovering blur near my lavender. A quick scan unmasked it as a Hummingbird Hawk-Moth, an insect that mimics a bird so perfectly I thought I'd stumbled upon some rare phenomenon, but I was soon schooled about the day moth's lore. (Image credit: Kaycee Hill / Tom's Guide)Suddenly, every morning (and evening) became a game of hunting down new species. I used the tool to log a tiny, striped Zebra Spider, spot a Scarlet Tiger Moth hiding by the nettles, and a Red-veined Darter dragonfly.By the time I had logged everything from grasshoppers to metallic beetles, my perspective on my yard had completely shifted. Thanks to this one iPhone feature, I now see my garden for what it is: a beautifully complex, thriving ecosystem.Why don't you have a go at scanning your own backyard. Just don't blame me when your camera roll is completely taken over by bugs. Follow Tom's Guide on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!More from Tom's Guide I tried the new Siri AI features: here's 3 you'll actually want to use every dayApple hid a perfect 'dumb phone' feature inside your iPhone that's great for kids — here's how to turn it onThe price of new phones is skyrocketing — 8 habits to make your current one last for years Kaycee is Tom's Guide's How-To Editor, known for tutorials that get straight to what works. She writes across phones, homes, TVs and everything in between — because life doesn't stick to categories and neither should good advice. She's spent years in content creation doing one thing really well: making complicated things click. Kaycee is also an award-winning poet and co-editor at Fox and Star Books.