Searches: your questions answered

JPEG, PNG or WEBP, up to 25 MB. Before upload your browser shrinks the photo to at most 2048 pixels on its long side and re-saves it as a JPEG under 4 MB, so very large photos work without a slow upload. HEIC photos from an iPhone are not accepted as files; take a screenshot of the photo or export it as JPEG first.

One clear face, facing the camera, gives the best result. If the photo has several people, crop it to the face you want before you upload; a group photo can be rejected with a message asking for a clearer photo with one face. If the face is small, turned away, or covered, the search may find nothing to match against.

Yes. Screenshots are the normal way to get a photo out of an app that blocks saving. Crop so the face fills most of the frame and the app interface, name and other faces are cut away. On a phone the built-in photo editor does this. A face smaller than roughly 60 pixels across rarely matches, so prefer the largest version of the photo you can see.

A normal search usually finishes in well under a minute. A deep search routinely runs past two minutes because it covers more public sources. You can leave the page: the scan keeps running and, if you are signed in, lands in your History with its matches. The page keeps watching for up to fifteen minutes and tells you if a scan is taking longer than usual.

The search does not run, and you see a message asking for a clearer photo with one face. The usual causes are a face that is very small in the frame, turned mostly away, hidden by sunglasses or a hand, or heavy blur. Choose a photo where the face is larger and facing the camera, or crop the one you have so the face fills the frame.

Every search you start uses one credit, so searching the same photo again later uses another. An accidental double click on Start is caught and does not start two scans. If you are signed in, the first scan is saved in History with its matches, so there is usually no need to run it again unless you want a deep search or a fresh look after some time has passed.

No. FaceSearch takes one photo file; it does not accept a video, a URL or text. For a video, pause it on a frame where the face is clear, take a screenshot and crop to the face. For a profile link, screenshot the profile photo. A name is not a search: FaceSearch holds no names and does not look anyone up by name.

A great deal. A sharp, well-lit, front-facing photo where the face is at least a few hundred pixels across matches far better than a dim, blurred or angled one. Filters, heavy compression and screenshots of screenshots all cost detail. The photo tips page shows what works and what does not, with examples.

As a guest you get a small number of free normal searches, shown on the search page, with no account. Guest scans are not saved, and deep search is not available. Signed in, every scan is saved in History, the Free plan gives two credits in total, and paid plans add normal credits, deep credits and every source link. The guest allowance is one per network: clearing cookies or switching browsers does not give a new one.

A guest session starts with a Cloudflare Turnstile check that confirms a real browser is asking, so the free allowance cannot be drained by scripts. It normally completes on its own without a puzzle. If you see a message that your browser could not be verified, refresh the page, pause an aggressive content blocker for this site, or create a free account, which does not need the check.

Pages anyone can open without logging in: public profiles, blogs, news, forums, galleries and the like. Private accounts, stories, direct messages and anything shown only to logged-in users are never searched. A normal search covers social media, news and the indexed web; a deep search adds forums, archives and video pages that general search engines tend to skip, still only where they are publicly accessible.

Yes. The FaceSearch apps on the App Store and Google Play use the same account, credits and History as the website, so a scan started in the app is waiting for you on the web and the other way round. A plan bought inside an app is billed by Apple or Google and managed in that store; one bought on the website is managed on the Billing page.