# Seek by iNaturalist — user reviews > 1,052 indexed App Store user reviews of Seek by iNaturalist by iNaturalist, rated 4.80/5 from 30,887 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/seek-by-inaturalist/id1353224144/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/seek-by-inaturalist/id1353224144.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 26,452 · 4★ 2,761 · 3★ 739 · 2★ 339 · 1★ 596 ## What do users think of Seek by iNaturalist? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 🚀 Accurate identification - 🌳 Helps connect with nature - 🎮 Fun and engaging challenges - 💰 Free with no ads - 📚 Provides species details - 🌍 Covers wide range of species **Cons** - 🐛 Inconsistent identification accuracy - 🔍 Difficulty focusing camera - 🤖 Struggles with small/moving objects - 🗂️ Lacks ability to edit/delete observations - 🗺️ Geographic limitations in species coverage - 🔋 Battery draining **Commonly reported bugs** - Camera freezes/crashes - Incorrect species identification - Observations not saving properly - Slow performance on older devices **Most requested features** - Allow manual species entry - Add option to post observations to iNaturalist later - Implement search/sorting for observations - Integrate flashlight for low-light conditions - Provide feedback/correction options for misidentifications - Sync observations across devices ## Newest reviews (20 of 1,052) ### 4/5 — Love it but could use some improvements. *2026-08-25, version 2.18.1* Like I love it but just saying it could be lowkey more accurate…and one annoying thing is that it takes so long for it to find the species and often it says I need to give another angle or something. But if you spotted a rare I dunno snake and you already zoomed in and came very close and like imagine if then seek just said that you need another angle which probably would be depressing cos you’ll probably never see that snake again(this has not happened to me btw just saying) ### 3/5 — Ok but “dicot”? *2026-08-15, version 2.18.1* Works for some things but almost everything I check it says “dicots”. I think it told me that about my pepper plants so i pulled them up. It told me that about another plant and so i moved it over to my shrub and it too was supposedly a dicots. Frustration ### 3/5 — Decent, but… *2026-08-15, version 2.18.1* I’m need my macro iPhone lens to kick in. Your use of my camera is not user selectable. Too bad because insects tend not to be human size! ### 3/5 — Not as accurate as it used to be *2026-08-13, version 2.18.1* Used to be a wonderful way to learn about new species. I had a professor who suggested this app for school. It was accurate a few years ago. Lately, it’s been off. Perhaps needs an update? ### 2/5 — A good idea but the wrong execution *2026-08-08, version 2.18.1* this app works in theory. but recently i’ve taken a lot of photo of wildlife and flowers such as king snakes or man of the wild’s, this app couldnt identify them at all ### 3/5 — Awesome *UPDATED 8/2026 Below original* *2026-08-07, version 2.18.1* Best identification app! I can do plants, bugs, and more in a one stop shop. Unlike some apps, it nearly never gives incorrect ID, and it will narrow it down to as much as it can if it can't determine exact species. This gives a great start on many things. Really love and appreciate iNaturalist for their awesome work! ***UPDATE 8/2026*** Unfortunately, I find I get a lot of false identifications now. Especially with bugs. There is no way that I can find to report "hey I don't think that's what it is actually". I took a picture of the same dragonfly 3 times yesterday and received 3 different IDs which I believe are all incorrect. This incorrectly fuels data and also incorrectly teaches people what things are if they aren't paying attention or if they don't know what to look for. I find that irresponsible, and I much prefer when it would fail to identify it or only go as far as it could positively ID, such as giving the family. I respect that. I find this change disappointing from an app that I have highly recommended to many people. ### 2/5 — I’m actually liking it more… *2026-08-05, version 2.18.1* Great app But please make it more accurate ### 4/5 — app is good but a bit buggy *2026-07-31, version 2.18.1* i think theres just some glitches to work out, and also you guys should add something that identifies rocks, i feel like that would be cool ### 3/5 — Decent enough *2026-07-29, version 2.18.1* My biggest gripe with this app is its inability to see the big picture. If I’m focused in on a plant, it’ll see the leaves and be like “oh, that’s X!” but then a cm to the left and it catches sight of the flowers and suddenly “oh, that’s Y!” and so on. It has difficulty putting elements together to recognize “oh, actually, it turns out that’s Z.” And it desperately needs the ability to left the user select the kingdom or lock in on which phylum/family/genus/etc it is. There’s been dozens of times I’ve tried to ID a bug on a plant and the app is like “oh, that’s a dicot.” No. We’re not looking at the plant right now! We’re looking at the giant purple beetle ON the plant! But I can only zoom in so much on the bug without everything turning into a blur. ### 4/5 — Bad recognition *2026-07-27, version 2.18.1* Poor recognition of animals. Identified a pigeon as a domestic dog. ### 3/5 — Trouble with Dicots *2026-07-26, version 2.18.0* App seems to have trouble identifying some pretty basic Home Depot plants. It gets to Dicot then the suggestions go wild. ### 2/5 — Doesn’t seem to be what it used *2026-07-24, version 2.18.0* Most of the time lately, I can’t identify what it is I’m asking them or give some random name and you go look it up on the Internet and it is not at all what you’re looking at not sure what happened to the app but it sure isn’t very good anymore. ### 2/5 — Okay *2026-07-23, version 2.18.0* Not the best ### 2/5 — Was great *2026-07-23, version 2.18.0* This app used to be excellent but now doesn’t seem to identify much at all. ### 4/5 — Need to fix some things *2026-07-18, version 2.18.0* When the app takes a picture, and I don't know if it's correct, I need to be able to view the species before the image is saved and ID'd as that plant. Of that's not possible, then I need to be able to say, "Not that plant" and be able to delete that image and revert to any previous image. ### 2/5 — This app isn’t very helpful *2026-07-17, version 2.18.0* I guess if you want to identify larger animals this app is fine, but whenever I see an insect like a bee and try to identify it, it tells me they can’t identify the exact species. When I tried to identify a dog it said it was a whale. And the camera quality is Always blurry and I can’t focus on one thing. Don’t recommend this app. ### 4/5 — Best mobile ID app available *2026-07-17, version 2.18.0* Brilliant app. It can correctly recognise things 9 out of 10 times, and is very intuitive to use. There are a few very minor flaws, but they will rarely impact ordinary use of the app. Occasionally, the camera will get 'stuck' when attempting to log a new observation. That is to say it can correctly identify, say, an insect, but thereafter be stuck loading and necessitate reopening the app, meaning the new observation is not saved. This doesn't happen often enough to be particularly annoying, and will usually work the second time around. The camera also allows the flash to be used when taking pictures, the idea being to enable making observations in low light. This often fails to work however as seek usually needs a moment to figure out specifically what it is looking at, and the window of time offered by the flash (at least on an iphone) is not long enough to accomodate that, meaning clear pictures *can* be taken in the dark, but seek will be unable to recognise them most of the time. ### 3/5 — Want to use with iNat but can’t log in *2026-07-16, version 2.18.0* I use my Apple login for iNaturalist, but Seek asks for an email and password. It won’t let me use Apple to login, so I can’t sync it with my iNat account. Frustrating. ### 3/5 — Why?!?!? *2026-07-14, version 2.18.0* So I got this app because I wanted to learn more about insects and animals. I learned some new stuff. But my aunts dog is like a mix of 4 different of dogs, and I wanted to learn a little bit an about what she is. So a take a picture and it tells me she is a white polar bear???!!!??? (My aunts dog is dark brown and black). Ok so I get that you can’t tell me all the breeds she is but at least tell me she isn’t a polar bear. So I give this app 3 stars since I learned a little bit. ### 2/5 — Update horrible *2026-07-12, version 2.18.0* I’ve had this app for about 18months. At first it was great and then I guess they did an update. Now the app barely works and will not identify anything like it used to. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Dicots everywhere *2026-08-22, version 2.18.1* The idea of the app is cool but it’s horrible. Just says everything is a dicot without actually drilling down further no matter how close or far away from a plant you may be. ### 1/5 — Why does everything use AI *2026-08-09, version 2.18.1* I used to get relatively accurate plant identification from this app. At some point in the recent past, they switched to an AI that could not accurately identify a plant if it was reading a label. I went from correctly identifying plants 9 times out of 10 to identifying a plum tree as a wasp. There were no wasps in the picture. There were hanging plums in the picture. At no point did it identify the plant as a tree, the fruit as a plum, or anything even remotely accurate. I’m deleting this app. I wish that everything that used to be helpful had not become so reliant on the use of AI to fix problems that didn’t exist in the first place. ### 1/5 — Inaccurate - Utter Rubbish *2026-08-08, version 2.18.1* Utterly inaccurate. Finds everything as a didcot. Despite scanning blatantly obvious spieces under test, this app got everyone wrong. ### 1/5 — False advertising *2026-08-06, version 2.18.1* Couldnt tell me what animal i took a picture of ### 1/5 — Ужасно плохо *2026-08-05* Даже морковь распознать не может ### 1/5 — Wildly inaccurate *2026-08-03, version 2.18.1* Thought my mutt dog was a horse and a moth within a few seconds… hilarious ### 1/5 — Bad. Really not as great as the reviews tout *2026-07-26, version 2.18.0* Update. Still sucks. Cannot id basic weeds? Just calls them dicots. Specific identification is still difficult for this app. After leaving and coming back, my test plant was still unknown after SIX images. ### 1/5 — Inaccurate AI Slop as Edutainment Shovelware *2026-07-03, version 2.18.0* If you are able to identify just about 10 plants yourself and know what dicots/monocots are, you are going to want to violently throttle the ai-slop consumers who created and swear by this app. This app is recommended so often despite being equal/worse to similar apps one has to suspect the hype is artificially generated. A data center somewhere is destroying nature so this app can miserably fail at telling you what a plant is. ### 1/5 — What happened to Seek? *2026-06-30, version 2.18.0* This app used to be excellent and very accurate but since whatever update they made sometime in the past year, it is virtually wrong 75% of the time. The new AI model sucks and they should go back to the old one. ### 1/5 — used to work better *2026-06-26, version 2.18.0* now it can never focus on anything and struggles to correctly identify anything or identify it past the first level of identification. cant even trust it when it does get the whole classification ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Brilliant *2026-08-03, version 2.18.1* Very good app. Helps a lot if u want info about an animal and to know what it is. Works 90% of the time. Best app for this ### 5/5 — Best app on the app store *2026-07-27, version 2.18.1* Well done, No advertising nothing negative and a wonderful app in general. ### 5/5 — 🙇‍♀️ *2026-07-14* Please support Korean! ### 5/5 — Amazing app, a few hopes it for it *2026-07-07, version 2.18.0* Considering it identifies things correctly the majority of the time, I’m really impressed by the app! Everything in it so far is well designed. One thing I’d really like is to be able to create folders and sub-folders within my observations. Like being able to group all of the plants on my property together, and then group them further like by a specific garden, or your weeds you have. Then a folder of the plants you saw while traveling somewhere. Also as a plant noob, more information on each plant would be really nice, like their soil, sun, and water preferences, it would really be an all around helper app in that regard ### 5/5 — Absolute cinema *2026-07-04, version 2.18.0* It’s like real life Pokémon Go ### 5/5 — Seek is Amazing!!!! *2026-06-29, version 2.18.0* Amazing. I have used this app for 4 years now. And I have no complaints!!!!! ### 5/5 — Disappointed *2026-06-28, version 2.18.0* I have found that it is unable to identify plants. It only IDs the plant family. ### 5/5 — Invaluable. *2026-06-26, version 2.18.0* A must have app. So you have a bank app. Then you need Monee. After that then Seek comes naturally. ✔️ ### 5/5 — Puzzle pieces *2026-06-24, version 2.18.0* A friend and I were walking a trail and came upon a bunch of feathers and a head. Jokingly I opened the app and snapped a picture. It immediately identified it as a Northern Flicker. We were amazed and amused. We compared the markings on the feathers to a picture on the app it looked to be correct! Wish I could attach the picture here to show why we were so astonished. ### 5/5 — Amazing app *2026-06-15, version 2.18.0* Identification works very well. The facts about the identified species are also very good, and the organization is amazing as well. They have partnered with many organizations like National Geographic in order to improve the identification and facts. For birds however, I prefer the Merlin/Marlin ID app by Cornell labs, as it is a bit more accurate and can work with bird calls as well. Maybe they can partner with Cornell labs, but otherwise this is an amazing app. --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-28.*