Shoreline UCSB vs KnowKi
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Shoreline UCSB
This official campus platform connects students, staff, and faculty. Discover and join organizations, find and sign up for events, and interact with the university community. Build a co-curricular record and access important resources.
- Find and join organizations
- Browse and sign up for events
- Interact with community members
- Build co-curricular record
- Locate student resources
- Create and track events
Read full descriptionHide full description
Shoreline is UC Santa Barbara’s official community engagement platform for students, staff, and faculty. In Shoreline, you can find and join organizations, browse and sign up for events, interact with community members, and much more. Download Shoreline, log in with your UCSB Net ID and password, and “dive in” today! NEW FEATURES ADDED QUARTERLY! STUDENTS - Discover events and organizations - Connect with staff, faculty, and University departments - Locate important student resources - Check-in at events, earn badges, and complete educational tracks - Build a co-curricular record that demonstrates your involvement, service, and leadership STAFF & FACULTY -Get involved in the campus community, including staff and faculty-only groups and events -Connect with students and provide mentorship -Create events, track attendance, and collect pre- and post-surveys -Take advantage of tools for your department, including a meeting scheduler and advanced form processing! (Some functionality is limited to the web version.) Support: shoreline@ucsb.edu Web Version: https://shoreline.ucsb.edu For more information: https://studentlife.sa.ucsb.edu/shoreline/
KnowKi
Discover and learn about the living beings in your chosen environment. This app uses real-world observations and interactive lessons to help you identify local flora and fauna, building your knowledge day by day. Engage with fun quizzes and track your progress in your personal field guide.
- Identify local species by group (birds, plants, insects, etc.)
- Learn with real photos and iNaturalist observations
- Daily quizzes and practice exercises
- Personalized field guide with progress tracking
- Explore species by region or specific locations
- Connect with friends and share scores
Read full descriptionHide full description
Get to know the living beings around you by name. KnowKi teaches you the species that people see regularly near a place you choose, with real photos, short practice, and a path that builds day by day. Botanist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer suggests ki (say "key") for any living being of the Earth, in place of "it": a bird, a tree, a snail is someone, not something. Together they are kin, in place of "them." KnowKi helps you get to know the more-than-human beings around you, until you can recognize kin in the wild with no key. Your guide is Āki, a kiwi from Aotearoa New Zealand whose name, in te reo Māori, means to encourage and urge on. A PATH OF SIX SPECIES AT A TIME Pick a place and a group: birds, mammals, plants, insects, arachnids, herps (reptiles and amphibians), fish, crustaceans, sea slugs, or other mollusks. Groups appear where they live, so sea slugs show up on the coast, not in the desert. Each unit introduces six species: meet them, match each one to a new photo, practice with ten photos and four choices, then pass a checkpoint to open the next six. REAL SIGHTINGS FROM REAL PLACES Lessons use research-grade iNaturalist observations recorded near your place, most commonly seen first. Native species lead the way; each chapter ends with an optional unit of introduced species, the ones people brought here. Protected species are included too, with their conservation status, and their locations always stay hidden. Every photo is credited to the naturalist who took it. PRACTICE THAT STICKS Missed species come back next time, and correct answers return over the following days. Recall cards ask you to type or say a name from the photo alone. A species becomes kin once you recognize it in two different photos on two different days. PLAY The Daily: five species a day, easy to hard, in three editions: your neighborhood, your country, and the world. Share your score without spoilers. Quirky Quizzes test what wild neighbors leave behind: eggs, nests, bones, tracks, feathers, and scat. YOUR FIELDBOOK Every species you've met, with a short introduction from Wikipedia, a map of where it's found, and your progress. Filter by group, favorites, introduced or protected species, and earn milestones along the way. TRIPS Learn the kin of any country, every U.S. national park, marine sanctuaries, or the most biodiverse places for life on Earth. GO MEET YOUR KIN Once you have 10 kin, KnowKi shows which are out and about near you this month, with a monthly Field Bingo card. Photograph what you find and share it on iNaturalist; connect your iNaturalist username to stamp each species you've found. Know a species well? Help identify other people's observations of it. A HOME-SCREEN WIDGET Your trail, today's goal, and your Daily score, with Āki under a sky that follows the time of day. PLAY WITH FRIENDS Sign in, turn on Friends, pick a nature name, and send your invite link. See each other's kin, trails, milestones, and Daily scores (a friend's score shows once you've played that Daily too). Species and places are never shared. YOURS, ON EVERY DEVICE No account needed. If you like, sign in with Apple to keep one Fieldbook on your iPhone and at knowki.app; KnowKi never asks for your name or email. No ads, no analytics SDKs, and no tracking. Optional soundscapes and gentle reminders. Lessons need an internet connection. Photos and observations come from iNaturalist contributors under Creative Commons licenses; species introductions are excerpts from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: KnowKi at 100% against Shoreline UCSB's 0%. KnowKi also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.3) and update cadence (every 4 days vs monthly). Shoreline UCSB's advantage is ratings volume (212 vs 2). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
KnowKi holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Shoreline UCSB has 212 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 0% of Shoreline UCSB's written reviews are positive against 100% of KnowKi's.
Shoreline UCSB ships an update monthly, KnowKi every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on November 7, 2026 and November 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Shoreline UCSB | KnowKi |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.3 (212 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 0.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 212 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Monthly | Every 4 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.4 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 77 MB | 44 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Novalsys, Inc | Garrett Craig |
Customer experience
Shoreline UCSB
KnowKi
In-app purchases
Shoreline UCSB
No in-app purchases
KnowKi
No in-app purchases









