Complex and hard to use
UI is overly complex and hard to use. Why even change it at all? This app doesnt feel like it was made for naturalists anymore. Im so sick of this modernist minimalist corporate lifeless slop.
Does the job, except for two problems
The animal/plant scanning isn't always accurate but it gets close much of the time and definitely helps get much much closer to IDing than if I didn't have it. There's one issue though, when uploading pictures to the community there's an optional notes section which is the only way to clarify things about the picture. But there's a recent glitch where your keyboard will come up for a second and then go back down, you can't edit until you get lucky and it stays one time. I've noticed this affects Grammarly and SwiftKey more, and Gboard and the default iOS keyboard less. Not sure if this a them problem or an app problem. I've not seen this elsewhere
EDIT: Recently the app hasn't connected to the internet at all, even when I have 4 bars or full bars
EDIT: Recently the app hasn't connected to the internet at all, even when I have 4 bars or full bars
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Response from developer
Thank you for the feedback. Are you able to share a screen recording of this with help@inaturalist.org? This is the first report of this behavior we've had.
Not for me
I accidentally made a type of bug I really hate show up on my phone by tapping one of the pins nearby, and that was it. Not using it ever again. I was aware that this app is for most living things, but if there’s a chance I would see something I really hate, I’m not gonna use it. I liked it until this happened. Too bad. Didn’t foresee what could happen.
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最近のアップデートで使いづらくなった
国を選択してクワガタの種類を調べるのに、よく使っていたが、アップデートのせいで、選択した国のクワガタの一覧から選んだ種類をタップすると、種類の一覧に戻れなくなった。とても面倒くさくなった。このアプリをよく使っているので修正をお願いいたします。
Response from developer
Thank you for the feedback. These are issues we noted last week and are working on fixes for them. フィードバックをいただき、ありがとうございます。これらは先週確認した問題であり、現在修正に取り組んでおります。
Best plant ID app by far
It’s free but I’d pay considering how good the plant ID is. Just fantastic. Your data also helps research, instead of making some tech oligarch even richer. Proof that not all tech is rotten these days.
Intentionally Skittish?
Overall, I find this app very helpful, when out in the woods. However, I’ve noticed that shy’s away from identifying plants, such as poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. It refuses to identify them with 100% confidence. I suspect this is a liability issue? I get it, but I would appreciate it if it was a little more honest about its assessment. I mean… If I can identify poison ivy… This app certainly should.
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Huge improvements over iNat Classic
I am a longtime iNaturalist user (almost a decade) who struggled with the limitations of the iPhone app for years, especially the limited number of uploads at a time. This app version (on Advanced Mode) has dramatically increased functionality (awesome easy in-app observationsearch, ability to see updates on the identifications you’ve done for others, etc.) and of course preserves all my fav features of the platform, like the computer vision system that offers possible preliminary ID of your observations based on visual attributes and geography. (This has been an element of iNaturalist for over a decade, long before computer vision started being sold as AI, but the model has gotten much better and in this app version the way it shows results with percent probability is very helpful in decision-making.) I still think the Android app functionality is slightly better in a few ways, but the computer vision and upload grouping is now better in the iPhone app. (This is impressive for anyone who knows how bad the iPhone app was compared to Android for years.) Also, I am hyped about the new easy “species I haven’t seen before” filter!! Now I’m just waiting for it to get easier to add observations to projects and edit their project attributes/tags in app 😀
Of course, as always, iNaturalist is for documenting the presence of organisms that are growing naturally outdoors in nature, not houseplants or domestic animals, and the observation system *starts* with the optional computer vision suggestions but depends on community consensus (just like, y’know, science), but these are exactly the things I want from it.
Of course, as always, iNaturalist is for documenting the presence of organisms that are growing naturally outdoors in nature, not houseplants or domestic animals, and the observation system *starts* with the optional computer vision suggestions but depends on community consensus (just like, y’know, science), but these are exactly the things I want from it.
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Use iNat Classic
I love iNaturalist but they need to fire whoever is making this app it keeps getting worse. iNat classic is great would be nice if they just expanded its functionality
Great!
Super appli pour facilement identifier des oiseaux, plantes ou poissons en voyage. Facile d‘utilisation, exactement ce que je cherchais. Merci!
It’s great! But let’s make the AI optional.
I really love iNaturalist and the community that it builds, but the AI eats up my phone power and makes me feel so guilty about damage it’s doing to the environment. Please make the AI optional!
Edit: Thank you for your help, I truly appreciate you taking the time to explain it to me.
Edit: Thank you for your help, I truly appreciate you taking the time to explain it to me.
Response from developer
Thank you for your feedback. iNaturalist does not use generative AI like a large language model to provide ID suggestions. If you're thinking of something like Gemini, ChatGPT, etc, what iNat does is very different and much much smaller. We've used the basic same approach since we added computer vision ID suggestions in 2017, and our computer vision model is trained on a few machines we control, not in a large data center. In the case of this app, the model that provides live ID suggestions is in the app and on your device, and the in-camera suggestions all happen on the device, using very little electricity. Even sending photos to our model on our servers is quite different than prompting a large language model. In Advanced Mode in the app you can set up the app to not use computer vision suggestions by default.
Super useful
I really like the feature where you can use the map to see where a taxon has been seen. Like a live habitat map.
Great! Some Suggestions
This app is fantastic and it genuinely gets me out the house. I think if concepts such as weekly/seasonal tasks or achievements badges would make this app rival Pokemon Go. Little in-app goals and medals would have me in a chokehold. A tab that shows you creatures to look out for in your area, popular sightings or species hot-spots would be fun too :)
The app feels a little bit clunky sometimes as well. There needs to be a search function for other users in-app.
Overall great.
The app feels a little bit clunky sometimes as well. There needs to be a search function for other users in-app.
Overall great.
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My favorite app!
This is the only app I voluntarily pay for. Using iNat to learn more about the creatures all around me (and maybe even help a scientist out with their research!) has brought so much joy to my life.
INaturalist now says mushrooms are paw paws
Title says it all. The AI model is garbage now.
What model is INaturalist using? Any disclosure here?
The dev replies saying “we’ve always used machine learning is really really poor argument for the slop AI you are using NOW. It has gotten so terrible. The UI is a nightmare & there IS NOT a way to switch to the older amazing version of iNat in the settings as the devs state here. Constant overload of email notifications, but when you open the app you don’t see ANY of them. What have you done to this app? Is this what the big google money brought to iNat? & you ask for donations?!? Fix this app first. Once loved iNat when it was reliable & useful, it is not anymore. Notice the dev reply, they don’t answer questions
What model is INaturalist using? Any disclosure here?
The dev replies saying “we’ve always used machine learning is really really poor argument for the slop AI you are using NOW. It has gotten so terrible. The UI is a nightmare & there IS NOT a way to switch to the older amazing version of iNat in the settings as the devs state here. Constant overload of email notifications, but when you open the app you don’t see ANY of them. What have you done to this app? Is this what the big google money brought to iNat? & you ask for donations?!? Fix this app first. Once loved iNat when it was reliable & useful, it is not anymore. Notice the dev reply, they don’t answer questions
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Garbage and useless.
I tried this out by taking a picture of my edelweiss plant. This app identified it at 98% angiospermae. What is angiospermae? A “flowering plant”. Well of course my flower is a flowering plant. That’s not helpful.
So I search for its “other suggestions”. It gave edelweiss a 1.8% match. Wow, so basically what that tells me is that this app doesn’t work at all.
So I search for its “other suggestions”. It gave edelweiss a 1.8% match. Wow, so basically what that tells me is that this app doesn’t work at all.
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It’s great! But let’s make the AI optional.
I really love iNaturalist and the community that it builds, but the AI eats up my phone power and makes me feel so guilty about damage it’s doing to the environment. Please make the AI optional!
Disagree with AI use
Uses generative AI to ID photos, would not have downloaded if I’d been aware of this. Disappointed, since I heard good things about iNaturalist and it’s community based identification. Does iNat classic not use AI?
Easily my favorite ID app
It’s super, super easy to upload photos, ID species, and add species IDs to other peoples’ photos. I love taking walks and taking pictures in the app. It’s also so awesome to connect with your local science community outside of clubs.
As for suggestions - I haven’t used the web version yet, so maybe this is easier on computer, but I would love if the app had:
- a way to bulk edit locations (like if I took a bunch of pics at 1 park, it’s time consuming to add the location to 30 observations when I get home)
- accessibility settings to make the location markers larger, it takes like 5 tries for me to tap them exactly, they have an annoyingly small hit box
As for suggestions - I haven’t used the web version yet, so maybe this is easier on computer, but I would love if the app had:
- a way to bulk edit locations (like if I took a bunch of pics at 1 park, it’s time consuming to add the location to 30 observations when I get home)
- accessibility settings to make the location markers larger, it takes like 5 tries for me to tap them exactly, they have an annoyingly small hit box
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Wish there was an option to block spiders
This app is great fun, I really enjoy seeing what people in my area have posted but I wish there was some way to block seeing a main species, my phobia of spiders is so strong I cannot see photos of them so it can be hard to browse knowing they are mixed in with all the other observations. Secondly I can never get the map icons to open up an observation, this feature only works for me on the web version? I also wish the icons got much bigger as you zoom in on them in the map. Overall such a great concept and way to track animal populations
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Another bought out app
I recently discovered this app, recommended by someone on TikTok. So I downloaded it earlier, hoping to discover new spiders in my home! But ofcourse, I do research into apps I support. It didn’t take me long to find out they accepted a 1.5 million deal by google to use ai. A bunch of their users protested and stopped using the app. It is such a shame to see an app lose its trusted followers just for extra money.
Although they are not using the most common wide spread ai that is getting hated on and destroying environments, currently. This most likely won’t stop them from doing such in the future. The pushback from their community stopped them from their most recent ai project, so I’ve read. So the only reason they stopped was not because of morals, but because of how their community appropriately reacted. Apparently they stopped using a ai summary tool, most likely similar to what google does when you search up something now on there. But this doesn’t mean they won’t use harmful ai in the future if they can be bought out.
The app is so good to use and I’d hate to lose it if I see more harmful ai as I continue to use the app.
Although they are not using the most common wide spread ai that is getting hated on and destroying environments, currently. This most likely won’t stop them from doing such in the future. The pushback from their community stopped them from their most recent ai project, so I’ve read. So the only reason they stopped was not because of morals, but because of how their community appropriately reacted. Apparently they stopped using a ai summary tool, most likely similar to what google does when you search up something now on there. But this doesn’t mean they won’t use harmful ai in the future if they can be bought out.
The app is so good to use and I’d hate to lose it if I see more harmful ai as I continue to use the app.
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