Places and visits

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Ask for locations

let grant = try await pool.authorization.requestAccess(
    AccessRequest(
        sources: [.photos],
        data: [.locations],
        operations: [.search],
        purpose: "Find the photos from the places you've been"
    )
)

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Read a photo’s place

let result = try await pool.context.search("museum in Lisbon", using: grant)

for hit in result.hits {
    if let location = hit.details.location {
        print(location.description ?? "")        // "Chiado, Lisbon, Portugal"
    }
    if let visit = hit.details.visit, let venue = visit.venue {
        print(venue.name, venue.category ?? "", venue.confidence)
    }
}

​

Visits

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Search by place

• Hits that matched a place carry the reason .place, the words that named it in placeMatches, and placeSimilarity, the share of the query’s words that named the place.
• searchPlan.operation is location when every word named a place, and retrievalIntent says place, placeType (a kind of venue, such as “museum”) or contentAndPlace when the query mixed both. See Search and browse.
• Under .placesVisited, only city and country words match.

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Home stays out

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Where the names come from

• Apple’s geocoder names the neighbourhood, city, metro area, country and time zone. Apple Maps finds the venue. Both see the coordinates of the place they name; Pool’s service never does.
• Each area is looked up once and kept on the device: names about once per square kilometre, venues about once per 200 metres.
• Lookups are slow on purpose: at most one every 1.5 seconds and 60 per indexing run, and never on a cellular or other metered connection. The next run carries on.
• Offline, the city comes from a table inside PoolKit (cities of 15,000 people or more, within 75 km). Apple’s names replace it later.

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Taking it back