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The Photos app for macOS uses artificial intelligence to detect details like addresses in images. Here's how to open addresses in Apple Maps.
If you've ever viewed maps online in a web browser, such as on map sites like MapQuest, you may have taken screenshots of a location's address for later reference.
Apple's macOS Photos and Preview apps can recognize information, such as address text, in screenshots you take. Both apps also have a variety of ways to manipulate the text in your screenshots.
In most cases, Control-click or right-click on the image location in Photo Preview or Preview mode will open a pop-up menu with various options you can use to open an address's location in either a web browser or Apple Maps.
Below we will discuss how to use the address search feature on maps in both photos and preview mode. We'll look at preview first, since both apps essentially use the same preview technology and context menus.
Using the Preview context menu
In the following example, we'll use a screenshot from a web maps app taken in a web browser on a Mac and opened in the macOS Preview app, located in the Applications folder on the macOS startup drive. .
By default, a new installation of macOS opens PNG images in the Preview app. You can change this setting by using the Finder's Info window for each image file, but for this example we'll use Preview.
First, the original screenshot:
A web browser screenshot from the online maps app.
The address is circled in red . If you hover your mouse over an address, you will see a small dotted outline.
If you Control-clickon the address while the outline is visible, or on the small gray arrow button on the right, you will see a pop-up menu containing serval options:
Hover and Control-click.There are two ways to open an address you clicked in Apple Maps, and one way in a web browser, which you might not need because you just clicked it were looking for. We'll look at the browser method first, and then the two Apple Maps methods.
If you select the Search menu item with an address in it, Preview will display a pop-up window with several options, one of which is a button called Search. sfollowed by the name of your search engine.
If you click this button, it will switch to your web browser and use the address as a search term, as if you were searching for it directly in your browser:
Use Search to open the address in a web browser.
The second method is to find the address in Apple Maps. To do this, select Copy map URLin the pop-up menu in preview mode.
This copies the Maps URL from the address text into one that Apple Maps can understand:
Use the Copy Map URL feature “.
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Then, open the Apple Maps app from the /Applications folder on your startup drive or from the Dock, then paste the copied URL into the Maps address search bar in the upper left corner of the main window. When you do this, Maps will display a small pop-up window with the address just below the search bar.
Tap the place name in the pop-up window and Maps will zoom to the address:
Paste the copied map URL into Apple Maps.
Opening an address link directly in Maps
A third, and even easier, way to open the URL of an address in Apple Maps from Preview isControl-clickan address, and then choose Show address from the pop-up menu.
When you do this, another pop-up window will appear with a small part of the map, as well as a Add to Contacts and Open in Maps button. > button. If you click Open in MapsClick the button, macOS switches to the Apple Maps app and zooms in on the address, launching Maps if it's not already running.
Click “Open in Maps” to open the address directly in the Maps app.
If you click the small Routes Instead of a pop-up window in Preview mode, macOS will switch to the Maps app and display a pop-up window with directions in the top right corner. In the directions pop-up window, you can enter any From: addressand get directions from the location to the address shown in the preview image.
You can also select View->Show 3D Map from the Maps menu bar to tilt the map into a 3D perspective, or select View-> Show Look Aroundto display a rotating 3D street view of the location.
You can zoom in to the Look Around panel in Apple Maps to fully view your location in 3D in the main Apple Maps window.
There are some more useful text options in the preview pop-up context menu, such as Share text, Copy text and Add to contacts directly. With the Share text element, you can send text to the Notes or Reminders app, or to Messages or Freeform.
Opening an address link in photos
Now that you know how to open address links in Maps from Preview, you can do the same in the Apple Photos app on macOS.
Apple's Photos is a central place for storing photos and albums, collecting, sorting, tagging, printing, and exporting.
To add a photo to Apple Photos on macOS, open the Photos app in the Applications folder in Finder, then drag an image from Finder to its main window.
Photo adds a new photo with a thumbnail to the current photo library.
Once a photo has been added to the Photos app, if you double-click it in the Photo Library panel, you'll get a larger preview of the image in the Library panel ”
Once opened in Photo Preview, the Photos app can now recognize text addresses in the same way that the Preview app can. You canControl-clickorright-clickan address in the Photo Preview pane to display the context menu, just as you did above in Preview mode.
The Photo pop-up context menu is essentially the same as in View mode, but with a few additional options such as Copy, Share, Rotate and various manipulations with the album in the Photos application.
The Photo and Preview features have some AI tricks, and searching for an address in Maps is one of the most useful. We've also previously shared how to use Preview's image AI to selectively copy parts of an image without much hassle.
As AI plays an increasingly important role in Apple software, it will be interesting to see what new tricks can be used in the Photos and Preview features.
