Gallery Text Search no longer working. Anyone else?

[waqqas31]

I am using a Canadian S23 Ultra (SM-S918W) running OneUI 6, but this issue was present with OneUI 5 as well.  I also faced the same issue on Tab S9 running OneUI 6.

One or 2 Android versions ago, my Samsung phones would return search results if the search term was in the picture but not, necessarily, in the file name, path or metadata of the picture.

For example, if I took a picture of the "Burger King" logo, I could search for "King" within the Gallery and the picture in question would come up. Or if I took a picture of my passport, I could search for "Address" and it would come up as well.

However, for a very long time now, OCR-based text search has not been working.  Now, results seem to be restricted to if the search term is in the file path or metadata (such as the location.)

To rub salt in the wound, other S23 users are not facing this issue and my work iPhone does not have this issue, either.

Is OCR-based search still working for anyone?  Or if anyone knows the solution to my problem, please do share!  

[tenems]

I have the same exact issue with my s24, i was on an s21 and it was working perfectly fine even to this date pictures in my s24 that were transferred from my s21 can still be search using this method. I wonder why this is the case because this feature has made my life so much easier in the past. 

[Manudeloz]

Im having the same issue with my new s23. With my older S10 that feature is still working. 

[Joshwhite007]

This is maddening that the newest latest and greatest phone does not have this feature, or that it seems to work so poorly. I had an s20 Plus for 4 years and I could search faces and keywords like you said and it seemed to work pretty flawlessly. Just got the s24 ultra and it has several of my family members faces that are searchable but only about 5 or 10 images come up of those people, and searching for words in images also doesn't seem to work very well. Samsung, get your act together! This seems like a basic feature that should work better than my 4-year-old previous phone.

[Dgriessmann]

This is the most annoying thing ever! Samsung has really screwed the pooch on this.

[Members_8t3wo9d]

This was one of my favorite features and I can't believe I bought the S24 and it doesn't work 😭 old photos & screenshots seem to work though

[Tiikow]

I swear these new phones are getting dumber and dumber, this is thelast samung phone for me, I regret switching from the iphone, no gimmick features, everything works as it should be

[waqqas31]

1-YEAR UPDATE (March 4, 2025):

Actually, Samsung has been improving things in the last couple months.  Even with OneUI 6.1 on my S23 Ultra, I started to see the text-based search functionality returning, but with an odd caveat... it almost seems like it only searches pictures taken in the last 12 months or so.  It's still an improvement, but it needs to be able to search all the pictures on your phone to truly be a power-feature.

I have seen some more types of search in the Gallery app on OneUI 7 on my S25 Ultra, but I don't know if these are exclusive to it or not.