iNaturalist

Cole Baxter

1 year ago

iNaturalist is such an amazing thing, and I cannot express how grateful I am that it exists. That being said, the app in its current state is incredibly buggy (no pun intended). It crashes reliably when I ID for more than 5 minutes. There are also many features that should be added, such as the ability to follow friends. I love iNaturalist, and this app could be so much better.

Connor Schuman

5 years ago

Update: not sure what's going for everyone having technical issues. I use it on iPhone and android both work well. Fantastic. Great way to catalogue your discoveries, easy to use, and a must have for anybody who is curious about what that weird growth on that tree might be. Start as a hobby taxonomist and get the input of professionals to become highly skilled at identifying plants, fungi, insects, arachnids, animals, and everything in between. Love it. Can't reccomend enough.

Eric St. Laurent

2 years ago

This app was amazing for the first few days I used it! It helped me identify some things I had photos of saved in my phone, and is very accurate and fun to use. Unfortunately, it has suspended my account for an unknown reason. Even after resetting my password, uninstalling and downloading the app again, I am still not allowed back in. I've read in other reviews that the app is buggy on Android, so maybe this is an issue on my end. Hopefully I can have access again soon and get back to it!

A Google user

5 years ago

While this is a great app for I.D. of very many species it has glitches. I have two uploads that are stuck and a constant message that says flashes uploading, syncing, uploading syncing. This has been going on for months. I contacted support and they said it'd stop when the app updates. The app updated and it didn't stop in fact, the last three species I've tried won't upload at all so apparently I'm pretty much locked out. Pretty bummed about this app

wingedwolf94

4 years ago

Really fun but crashes constantly. You can take a pic and it auto recognises the species of animal/plant with amazing accuracy! It's like Pokemon go but with real animals. Quite addicting. Only problem is that the app constantly crashes. It can't seem to load a page of images without crashing. It's been this way for years. Makes the app itself completely useless for browsing local discoveries because it crashes if you try. So I only use the app for posting pictures.

A Google user

6 years ago

i enjoy using the app. It's easy to upload pics and most of the time, it identifies species correctly. It's nice to be part of my local community of flora and fauna enthusiasts and get feedback about identifications from professionals. My only issue is that the app seems to always be preparing, cleaning up, and syncing. It was also acting strangely 36 hours ago in that it kept duplicating pics I was uploading. Every time I tried deleting a duplicate, another one would appear.

A Google user

5 years ago

Though it is extremely useful and very well designed, I do have two issues. First and most importantly being, the location should be easier to search, rather than have to drag your fingers on a map. I feel that it would be more efficient if we could find an address, or select a range in which you found it in. Secondly, when I search a species and then tap enter, regardless of my spelling or if said category exists, I'm told "Taxa not found" and it causes my phone to lag, It's rather patronizing.

Patrick Richardson

3 years ago

I tried many apps to identify the flora & fauna during my hikes and in my yard. This is by far the best. The review and suggestion feature by others is what puts it over the top. The side by side comparison feature is helpful. My only wish would be a few more pictures of some plants during the different phases of the season, but most have good reference pictures.

Asterid Vawn

2 years ago

Extremely helpful identification, very good mapping and decent search feature. I recommend it to anyone and everyone to get them to appreciate and learn about nature. Good UI but very strange, could very much use a large menu button for seeing your favorited sightings; it's an odd choice to not have it included. The identification suggestion feature - the most important part for beginners - is kind of hidden.

Royce Calavera

4 years ago

Easy to use, pretty darn accurate, and actually so fun to use! My main recommendation would be to create a "recent locations" option for the drop down search box when entering a new observation, because when you can't use your location with the crosshairs button, and have several observations to enter after the fact, re-searching and moving around the map over and over again to find your location gets horribly annoying.

Sara Lovotti

3 years ago

Wonderful app that needs an update! Like a lot of people have said, the app is really struggling to load photos, which is particularly frustrating because the purpose of the app is to share ID photos. Hoping they update to fix this problem soon. That aside, the app is great. You can give permission for researchers and publishers to use your photos (and give you credit) which is very cool. Especially when your photo ends up as the main photo for an organism on the Wikipedia page!

A Google user

4 years ago

The iNaturalist project is absolutely awesome for anyone who likes to record their wildlife sightings or wants help identifying the animals, plants, etc. that they see. The Android app is kind of buggy and clunky, but still worthwhile. It performs very poorly on slow internet connections (worse than other apps), and the "Explore" feature is unusable on older phones due to constant crashes. I wish I had more time to make proper bug reports, but I don't. The developers are usually very responsive.

Tommy Tsunami

2 years ago

This is like collecting Pokèmon but in real life! You find flowers, birds, or bugs out in the wild, take a photo of it, and the app identifies the species and builds your collection of sightings! I love photographing and documenting all the new wildflowers that I come accross on my hikes in different regions. Now I have my own personal library of my sightings with my own photos! I just wish there was a way to add friends or follow other users nearby. I need people to share this with. Amazing!

Philip Shirk

4 years ago

Website is awesome. App is super glitchy for me. Slow or inconsistent internet completely breaks the app. It's utterly useless offline. My friends with iphones claim to be able to use it offline quite easily (just uploading the photos later), but that's never been my experience on Android. I've tried on 3 different Android phones over the past 6+ years and my experience has always been terrible.

Zach Gentner

2 years ago

The user experience could be slightly better. It's unclear how to join groups or subscribe to guides. I don't believe there is a follow feature for users either. Overall the app functions well, but it's rather unintuitive. My favorite thing about iNaturalist is that it makes you much more conscious of every living thing around you. Each specimen becomes a beautiful and amazing new example of how vastly complex our world is. Every organism plays a part in the world, no matter how small.

Cialin D.

1 year ago

i love inaturalist, but the interface on the app is not great. posting observations is just ok, sometimes tricky. trying to look at other people's observations or just browsing through animals a lot of problems arise. i can't sort by favorites, recent, species, most of the stuff i like really. when im out i gotta rely on opening inaturalist in my browser which is a bit odd on mobile. inaturalist is a great community, i hope they can optimize the app so it's easier to access on the go.

JB M (John)

1 year ago

Edit: it has a hard time identifying emergent plants. It's a problem. One of my favorite apps - I call it my most important gardening tool. The more I use it, the more amazing it is. Readily identifies plants, both cultivated and wild. I've recently discovered it can do mushrooms and insects too. The AI behind this is impressive.