An amazing app all around for identifying species.
I’m just a 20 year old that wants to know what every creatures purpose is around me and this has been the most fun way to do it. There are no ads, you upload a picture of the animal of reasonable quality, it helps if there’s multiple pictures and you describe what you saw in the description area. You put your location, which can be moved around so that your location isn’t known. It’s important to note that the location is key in determining a species sometimes so be decently accurate on the location. Once you’ve done that, AI, that’s right, artificial intelligence studies the pictures and compares them to other picture alike and species in the area to often give you a suggestion that’s correct or another 10 suggestions below of which I usually find the species I’m looking for if it’s not too obscure. I’ve also contributed to the knowledge of where some species are which feels great. My only complaint is there’s no place to provide feedback but here and the upload speed is reasonably slow. But this is a wonderful app that I recommend for any biologist. Yes, you can submit species under the microscope, too!!!! Thank you California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society for helping create this app!!!
Love the app maybe make it more like a social network of naturalists?
I really love this app and use it pretty much daily since I’ve downloaded it. It’s great to have with you to quickly identify a species using the picture instead of having to go and google the characteristics of what you saw and hope it knows what you mean. I would like to see them update it with a section where you can go to a person’s profile and see all of their observations in one place like the way you view a project and all of its observations. Perhaps even add an option to follow a particular person and then see all the observations of people you follow in a feed. You can do kinda already do this but you have to search for the person and then be confined to whatever given map area you have on your screen. I think it would be better to have all of them on one page because sometimes I come across an observer whose observations I like (camera quality, focus on a specific species, or just like their observations) and I want to see all of them. Also, they should add a place where you can view all of the observations you’ve added to your favorites.
I love inat. I use it all the time. The taxonomy suggestions are almost always on point. I use it to explore areas I already am familiar with too to learn about the things living around me I’ve never heard of. Even the projects and guides are cool, because I can see which species in a group are most commonly encountered based on how many times they’ve been observed compared to others. The range maps you get for species etc are dynamic. BUT, the social component to me is abysmal. “Leaderboard?” No one cares. It’s a meaningless statistic. I’d like to be able to see who is observing similar things to me in an area. Who is consistently identifying a specific phylum or genus? (Not me lol). They should be acknowledged as someone with some knowledge in that area. I know inat has powerful algorithms capable of identifying species based on photos - use some of those algorithms to connect peoples’ observational powers and curiosity. Sometimes I observe something that scientist haven’t completely determined what subspecies lives in my specific area- why can’t scientists send out questions for people to find out? Don’t know the southernmost extent of a plant? Ask people who have observed it before and live in the area to look for it. This is a powerful app for taking citizen science to the next level. I’d love to see what they can do.
I’ve been using this app to keep track of all of my insect & plant observations locally. 213 observations to date. Unfortunately, over the years, I’ve had to deal with a lot of local misogynists & racially insensitive comments on my own page along with my observations showing up as blanks as of this morning. I finally reported this to the admin today after being harassed about an insect post comment from over a year ago this morning. I was told via email, that I can only block 3 people within this app (which I couldn’t today, because I already tried this morning) and in the response email, it was even admitted that their admin may come off as condescending due to language issues. Okay, we’ll since I am multi-lingual, I found that response from, “Tony”, who assumed I only speak American English, to be odd. If they know that language is an issue for a given person, then update the app & list people’s preferred language(s) on each of their pages. The app has on multiple occasions given me wrong identifications due to scientific names versus nicknames for any given observation (queue the misogynist responses) & I’m fairly certain languages tie into that. There is also what I call coded language in many of the comments in this app. I would probably be very cautious in letting children use this app with all the adult men that clearly use the app for more than observations.
Suggestion for the amazing developer(s) of this useful app
Everything about this app is extremely helpful and really user friendly once you make your first observation (taking a picture and identifying the species) I couldn’t ask for an easier identification system. Before discovering this app, I had to manually identify things myself, so I REALLY appreciate the hard work that’s been put into making this app. The only suggestions that I have are 1. Being able to tap and zoom in on the image being used while scrolling through the list of possible identifications and 2. Having an automatic tag system for species that are observed somewhere that they are not native to. I plan on studying invasive species in college and I believe that it’d be really cool if this app implemented a labeling system to notify users if they have identified a invasive species in the area. I just think that more people should realize that not every animal/plant that they see is supposed to be there (there meaning wherever the user lives) I feel like I’m rambling but what I’m trying to say is that iNaturalist could be VERY useful in spreading awareness of invasive species!
I would find a how to video most helpful. I started using this and didn’t understand about marking something as cultivated. I still don’t know for instance if I had a cultivated tree I purchased at a store and planted and now volunteers of that tree are coming up is it still cultivated? When my store bought flowers re seed are they still cultivated? Would love a place to mark the approximate size of the thing I took a picture of. In my photos a 2 inch tall flower looks the same size as a 24 inch tall flower because I take a close up of just the bud. Would the community like me to place a coin in the picture for size reference or keep it natural? I would also like a way to have a “private project”, or mark or flag items as personal. I don’t think all of my cultivated plants in my back yard and living room warrant making an official project but I’d like to pull up only things from my yard as I use the app to learn about them. I don’t think individual/ personal use is the intention of projects. The app is great fun, easy to use and feels accurate on identifications.
I have been the person that has always loved seeing nature and wanted to know what exactly I am looking at when I encounter a new-to-me species of flora or fauna. This app makes the process as easy as taking a picture and searching the suggested options to determine what you see. I have only been using it for about half a year and I can’t tell you how much joy my family has gotten out of simple moments like seeing a unique plant off the trail while on a hike and being able to know what it is almost instantly. The app works incredibly well for all life I’ve encountered so far, be it small or large, rooted, legged, or fungal, it really does a magnificent job. This app is my guide to understanding the wildlife I cross paths with, and it’s extra lovely because I can look back on my catalog and see the many different life forms I’ve encountered in the world. Lately I’ve been cataloging the bugs and birds I find around the house. I highly recommend this app, because I see this app having something valuable to offer all nature lovers. Embrace the magic and get this app.
It's a great app. Basically what it is is its a community of nature lovers sharing their observations and identifying species of plants٫ reptiles٫ mammals٫ birds٫ insects٫ and even fungi and arthropods. I do have a couple suggestions. First is the one I want in the app the most and its instead of just being able to send a photo or audio clip٫ but also being able to show a video of the organism. Second is to be able to click on someone's name or profile picture and see all their observations. Third and this is more of a complaint but I wish it wouldn't try to get you to upload every observation. It changes your profile picture to an upload button if you have observations you didnt post. The results when identifying a species are kinda accurate٫ im no biologist but I know for sure that a bush is not a rabbit. Something like that only happened to me once٫ and it was when I was trying to identify a bush and the app suggested a rabbit. The identification system isn't terrible though٫ it comes up with pretty accurate results. Once again٫ I am not a biologist٫ but I can tell by comparing the results to the picture.
Literally mine and my son’s favorite part of each day
What a neat, educational, app full of an infinitely vast treasure trove of information. My 7 year old son and I share our account, and he LOVES anything related to the outdoors and science in any way. He spends every possible waking moment outside every day, hot or cold, rain or shine, and I don’t have to ask what he’s doing when I hear him run inside suddenly, ask for (or just grab) my phone and he’s back out the door. Sometimes I notice, others I don’t know he used it at all until I get the email that I have new updates on here. Ha! We spend part of every day, different times of day to try to capture a variety of crawlies and critters and “bugs”. He loves clicking each new identification and reading and deciding whether or not he agrees with the id…and he could spend hours just clicking through from one fascinating photo to another. Always learning. And he’s excited to do it with his mom. I can’t say enough good things about this app/tool.
If I could, I would marry this app. iNat is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I have learned so much and have met so many amazing people through this app. Before iNat, I was the weird person who liked bugs. With iNat, I have slowly blossomed into an amateur subject matter expert documenting previously unknown behaviors/species relationships/coloration variations and submitting specimens to university entomological collections. I went from not being able to tell the difference between rice stink bugs and brown stink bugs one year ago to knowing hemipteran scientific names better than the common ones. Sure, iNat didn't do that in and of itself, but it facilitated my self-education and gave me the means to organize my data/photographs, and my competitive nature motivates me to go out and DOCUMENT ALL THE THINGS! The iNat people are continually improving their platform, and this mobile version is the best yet. The photo suggestion tool is amazing and sorely needed. Not perfect, but it's THE BEST version of photo ID out there and I'm frankly amazed by how good it is.
My property is designated as a National Wildlife Federation Habitat and I have made a point of trying to capture all of the flora and fauna that resides both full and part-time. This app is exceptionally well suited for this task. One shortcoming, however, is the audio recording/integration function. For image documenting, you can import from your photo library or use the app’s camera function. To add audio to an observation, however, there is no choice but to use the apps microphone. In other words, you can’t record audio in another app, edit to the desired portion of the recording, then import that file into iNaturalist. This is a considerable shortcoming. Often, I find myself attempting to record a bird that has been active but stops vocalizing for an long period. When, and if, it sings again, many seconds may have passed. This makes for some long audio files filled with mostly silence. My recommendation would be for iNaturalist to allow the importing of MP3 files just as it allows for importing image files.
I’ve been using iNaturalist pretty consistently for about a year and a half, ever since I moved into a more rural area. The app has really revolutionized my experience with nature. I had tried for years to use books and the Internet to self identify things I discovered in the wild often got overwhelmed and gave up. This app and community join forces in a way that almost immediately points me in the right direction or even gets it 100% correct the first try my only feedback would be to change the leader boards so that you can see more easily where you score within, a certain geographic region rather than against the entire community it’s pretty much irrelevant to most of us will never score high in the top. I also wish that there was a way to compare the suggested identification with the image you’ve uploaded before selecting the IDs, go back-and-forth to cross reference and check.
This wonderful app extends your pleasure in exploring the world, sparks your curiosity and deepens your knowledge all at the same time. Your own photos are the starting point to dig in and find out more about plants, animals, and natural phenomena anywhere in the world. You get to be a part of a friendly community that collectively has a huge amount of knowledge and enjoys sharing it. You get to use, for free, the creative work of the coders and designers at iNat who are figuring out better algorithms and integrating new science data all the time. Using iNat encourages you to take a generalist’s exploratory approach to the natural world - to look at everything. Not only is it a great app in its own right, it’s also a terrific field asset when used in conjunction with apps that concentrate on one element of the natural world, such as birds or trees. Along the way, your photography improves because you figure out how to take pictures that capture and reveal the most. You learn to see better and to see more.
This app is one of my most trusted and used apps. I have on my phone! I use it almost everyday, two-three times a day at any given time… I’ve helped many of my friends and family identify all sorts of things- that may have been wondering what it is…if it is poisonous or dangerous for pets, etc. Not to mention the amount of knowledge i have gained from the nearly 100 observations I have made while using this app. I highly recommend for any nature-bug-bird person out there who is looking to find a solid identification of what they are looking at. Not to mention the community of experts who double check your observations and will suggest the correct identity of your observations - and trust me when i say more than half of my personal observations have been misidentified or a different subfamily all together, they will leave a comment at times. Over all I would give this app 100 stars if they would let me….
Great for plants and gardeners, for personal use of things you’ve planted, natives you want to protect, and great for tracking invasive species. Great for tracking wildlife. Bird watching. Bug enthusiasts. Foragers. Flower lovers. There’s something for everyone. I wish there was a quicker method of getting IDs from the community, but it’s only been 2 days and I’ve uploaded months of stuff I’ve been tracking in my phone. But it would be cool to see a feature of searching for plants in the area and filter by ones that need IDs. I also wish you could set a default location on things instead of inputing it every time, I’m not going to share exactly where the highly sought native species are due to poachers, so I save them to my house. It would also be a cool feature to add in person events but projects sort of fits the bill I guess. Overall I’m loving this app so far.
This app can be super useful to identify bugs, animals, plants, and more! I originally downloaded this app when I actually was bit by a strange bug that appeared in my home. This app was super helpful, and was able to identify the bug I was bit by. I have actually tested this apps animal detection system, and it works 90% of the time. I was able to gather pictures of animals online, end upon scanning them with the app, most came out to be what the animal really was. However, there are times where the system fails to get the right animal, usually these times are due to the image itself. The animal identification system works best with zoomed in and clear photos of the animal or plant, however will still work sometimes with blurry or zoomed out pictures. And towards the end of my test, I scanned a picture of a person I found online, which sadly said it was inconclusive on determining what the “animal” was. I rated this 4/5 stars because it sometimes fails, but for the most part works. Thanks for this amazing app!
I love this app so much! For new people, this is a very good app with tons of stuff. Identifications, exploring, and commenting are just a few. I still have a few suggestions. Maybe what you could do, there could be tournaments for who can find the best animals or plants under a theme. People of the community can vote it up or skip it. You get points for likes and liking others, or identifying a plant or animal correctly. (To when they change it.) You could get coins if you win 1st, second or third, and you get more coins the higher rank you get. The tournaments hold 10-15 people. They end in 4 days. You upgrade tournaments by getting trophies. Maybe using the coins to upgrade the rim of your avatar, or maybe special colors on your screen instead of white. I think this will make more people motivated to have this app. Of course, the app is perfect, and maybe adding focusing the camera by tapping would be nice.
I absolutely love this app and recommend it to everyone. As an environmental science grad I’m obsessed with everything nature, but I can’t always identify what I’m looking at. This app is the easiest way I’ve found to ID something without spending a ton of time scouring images on the internet or flipping through books. Even if I can’t get a 100% sure ID I have a direction to look in for further research. Other users are also super helpful with confirming my IDs or suggesting their own based on my uploads. The app is super easy to use which makes it an excellent tool for citizen science and large scale data logging by anyone and everyone. You can even join different groups in your area and focus on different subjects (birds, plants, mushrooms, etc.). Who doesn’t love an informational app that makes it easy for the community to get involved and go outdoors?! This app is fantastic- 5 stars!!
As someone who just enjoys nature, this is a great app. I like just viewing other people’s observations even if I have no intention of identifying it. If me having fun showing my interesting wild plant/animal/etc findings helps some sort of research or cause, even better. I collect houseplants and do some work in landscaping, so I’ve done a bit of amateur research on plant varieties. I enjoy being able to submit guesses as to what I think plants might be. If I’m not correct, someone can correct me easily, too. When I’m wrong, I learn something. When I’m right, someone else learns something. Only real problems I have: - I get minor crashes when trying to update observations after they have already been listed. - I would like a way to mark an observation as possibly cultivated/captivity. I am unsure if there is a way to do this currently but sometimes am confused on whether or not I should identify captive species. (I see that I can do this when I post an observation, but not on other’s posts.) - I would maybe like a bit more direction as to how to use the app in terms of interaction with others. I was ‘agreeing’ with IDs that people posed on my observations, not realizing I maybe shouldn’t be doing that right away. Browsing the forums have been quite helpful in terms of etiquette; maybe a more obvious link to that? :)
I loved the app for all the reasons noted in the other reviews. I used it for about a year and was enjoying contributing to the documentation of wildlife in my area. When I had an observation and couldn’t capture a picture it made sense to use the picture they provided in the identification process. Well I did that for 3 or 4 observations and they sat there for months. Then one day some lady starts leaving condescending comments on those posts that I can’t do that and that she was going to report me. Which she did. And they wrote me more elitist condescending comments. AND I am pretty sure they deleted one of my own photos…they don’t deserve it anyway. I’m sure they took my photos and observation data to use for their own benefits. So sign up but beware your working unpaid for ungrateful condescending elitist academics. This is why the massive social potential of the app goes right by them unnoticed. They have no social clues and they don’t care what the users want as long as they post content for them to steal.
Amazingly useful app/website for ANYONE that is interested in nature
I have been a Docent (trained volunteer) at a California State Reserve and a California Naturalist for four years. iNaturalist is by far my #1 go-to place for any questions on species identification issues. It’s astonishing that (a) the automatically suggested IDs almost always contain the correct answer, usually as the first suggestion, and (b) that you can get confirmations of a proposed ID from multiple species experts around the world, and often within minutes of posting an observation. My favorite so far is a picture I posted of a single feather my granddaughter found (and held in her hand in the photo) that was quickly identified by an 18-year old expert on the opposite side of the world (and she also told me specifically that it was a “secondary flight feather” from a Red-shouldered Hawk). I can’t live without this app and neither should you.
It is super tedious to have to re-search for and set the location for each upload when you have 20+ to do at the same time. If it could simply remember your recent previous locations that would be amazing. Most apps these days do that. Also if there was a better way to get ID’s. It seems like if yours isn’t answered the same day it won’t ever get an ID. Maybe some sort of needs ID feed for everyone for the groups they have joined? It would also be nice to easily know who is an expert in a field and has trustworthy ID’s. Leaderboard is completely pointless for this. Value is not implied by number of uploads. Value would be correct ID’s/ expertise. Easily accessed known range maps for species would be great too. Flags for possible invasive species in area would also be helpful. Clickable sighting map so it’s possible to investigate the specific sighting to determine if it is credible.
I was looking for an app that could serve as a field guide and a log. This is perfect. The detection/categorization of flowers works well. I uploaded a lot of pictures that I had not taken with identification in mind. Feedback from other users is helpful, as is the ability to see what others have found in the area. You can mask the location of observations if you worry about exposing a rare or sought after species. Update 2019: have been using this for 3 years, still love it. Update 2022: 6 years and still love it. If you really want to get into this, check out their website. The app doesn’t have the full functionality of the website. The app is really a tool for uploading observations. The features on the website would be hard to replicate in an app. I do think they are working on a major upgrade, esp for iOS.
I’m completely blind but I don’t let that stop me from doing the things I love such as gardening. This app was pretty darn useful and accessible using my iPhone screen reader, and although it rarely correctly identified the plant right off the bat, it would most times previous to about April 2021 give me the correct suggestion in a list of possibilities. I am really, really disliking the updated System as there are far, far fewer suggestions even when I go turn off the “nearby“ switch (which I seem to have to do with every single observation). Along with that, the things it does suggest are laughably far from correct; no, the iris I’m taking a picture of is not a toad of any species, nor is it a blue land crab,, nor also “magic mushroom“ (I kid you not, that was the title of a suggestion and yes, it was the psilocybin )trip( variety of mushrooms per the species name to that title). Basically, this used to be really good and I would happily pay for what it used to be, but certainly wouldn’t pay for what it is now.
I was recommended this app by an online friend, and am so glad I started using it! I’ve always loved nature (and taking photos of the things I see), so iNat is a perfect fit for me. It’s super easy to use, and the auto suggest feature is a blessing in situations where I have... just NO idea what I’m looking at haha! 🌼 iNat has also been a motivating factor for me this pandemic- even stuck at home, this is a good way to ground myself in the world around me. Backyard species that I had previously overlooked (like small bugs or just ‘weeds’) helped remind me that every type of life is interesting in its own way. From tiny mushrooms I would have never ID’d previously, to purposely taking up-close shots of skittish butterflys, iNat has been nothing but a delight to use! I recommend it wholeheartedly to everyone, even if you don’t know too much about ‘nature’- this app can really help you learn! 🌱
iNaturalist is a great community sourced nature application that allows users to learn about a comprehensive amount of wildlife whether plant of animal and and observe and record their findings. The application makes it easy to learn about wildlife with all the captured data from scientists and other users like yourself including titles, descriptions and photos of subjects. The community can also aid you in your findings with suggestions on wildlife you have observed. Users can look up wildlife captured in their location or easily add it with the camera on the device they are using. The app allows users to create projects you can continually add to as well as follow projects from others you are interested in. iNaturalist also has a news section detailing the latest captures from the community as well as the latest developments concerning the application. For professionals as well as amateurs iNaturalist is a great tool to learn more about our everyday surroundings both near and far.
When I heard that there was an app that would help me identify birds, mammals, fungi, insects, plants and other organisms from photos, I was very skeptical. After all, there are millions of living organisms, and they look different at different ages, in different seasons, and even in different environments. I have been very pleasantly surprised by how often this app correctly identifies the subject. It works even better if you are familiar enough with the organism to know what specific characters to include in your photograph (for example, the app is more likely to be able to identify a plant from a photo of the flower than one of a single leaf). I often get an ID correct to the genus level in plants and species level for many animals. Even if I only get as far as a family-level ID, I know where to turn for further info. I often get a second or third ID within a week or two. Great app!
Love this app! Great for any living thing! If you are unsure of what you have sometimes others can help with identifying whatever it is you took a picture of! What a great independent non profit! PS I believe I’ve had this app since 2019 and it’s 2024! Yes it can be frustrating because you have to manually add your location(unless you have location on; I do not have mine on no thanks lol) and yes it doesn’t always say it’s identified until a a professional or whatever they are comes along and tries to identify it; now with this in the comments you can click agree if you agree; if not than don’t! The point was that it helps bring up suggestions (10 at most I believe most times less if you have a good picture!) depending on your location you select and what your picture is of
I’ve downloaded and tried handfuls of field-guide-type-apps (some for plants, some specifically for mushrooms, etc) and iNaturalist BY FAR takes the gold medal. Reasons iNaturalist is #1: the user-friendly setup of the app’s layout; the community/peer based suggestions with a social-media-meets-field-guide vibe; and just the fact that after downloading 5-6 free field guide apps and testing them all out- I DELETED THE OTHERS BECAUSE INATURALIST IS THE ONLY ONE THAT COULD COMPARE/REPLACE AN ACTUAL PRINTED FIELD GUIDE BOOK. >> One suggestion though: although I do love the feature where other users can comment their ID for my observation- whether they believe it to be the same species, etc that I had thought and originally posted, or whether they have a different suggestion- I THINK IT WOULD BE SO COOL IF AFTER ONE PERSON/USER POSTS/COMMENTS A SPECIFIC ID FOR AN OBSERVATION, IF ANYONE AFTER THAT AGREES- IF THEY COULD JUST CAST THEIR VOTE WITH THE BEFORE OBSERVATION ID. ^^ Or it would be even better if when I post an observation that I am unsure of the ID and maybe 2 of the apps top suggestions both look equally right, it would be cool if there was an option to check mark both of them, and ask the iNaturalist community to help ID the observation by voting. All around great app, SO GLAD I STUMBLED UPON IT.
I have been using this app along with a couple of other similar apps for a couple of years. The iNaturalist app is by far the best of all of them. It is very accurate at identifying about anything living. If you run across something you aren’t sure of the community can help with suggestions. The members are very knowledgeable if not expert. You have an account so your observations are all logged for you and you can log in from any device to use it. I use it everywhere and if I am pressed for time I just snap some photos with my phone and upload them later. The location information for the photo pinpoints where it was taken. I really enjoy being able to identify so many plants. It is a great learning tool. If you want an app to identify plants and animals of all kinds look no further.
Don’t get me wrong, i love this app and have used it for a while. I just don’t understand why they have removed so many features over the last few years? Some of my favorite parts used to be browsing animal or plant families and being able to jump around from species to species and all the way up to the kingdom level - now for some reason none of that is possible. You can’t access any phylogeny info from a species page without going to the website, and i’m not sure why. Same thing with the more social aspect of the app - i used to enjoy looking at my friends’ and other local’s pages to see what they’ve been finding recently, but now that is not possible either. You can’t view any profiles on the app at all. I thought they had introduced “seek” as a more beginner-friendly app, so it seems strange that theyve been breaking down this app to it’s bare bones state as well.
Gave it another shot recently. Glad to see login requirements are relaxed. Identification suggestions are surprisingly good at narrowing down possibilities if you’re not sure what you’re looking at, though I’d be hesitant to rely on them as the final word of course. One thing which would be useful in the Suggestions section is the ability to flip between your photo(s) and those of the suggestions for easier comparison. Access to dichotomous keys would be cool too, or at least inclusion of identifying features which would appear in the keys. It’d also be worth considering inclusion of brief warnings on important aspects such as toxicity. UI could do with streamlining as well, but I’ll hold off on going into that for now. Original complaint over Location Services still relevant though—it doesn’t seem to have a way to enter your location manually as the dev said would be done in an update. It’s also baffling why the app wants to use LS while using the Suggestions tool when it already has locations set for each photo; there’s no reason to assume a user will be searching for suggestions anywhere near where the data was gathered, so it’s asinine to do this. Or shady. Original review, April 2017: As others point out, the app is set up to rely on location services being on. Nope! Not doing it, guys. This also makes it tedious to explore areas you're not currently in. Deleting this nagware.
I really wanted to like this app. Unfortunately the irritations started the moment I installed it. First, developers should disclose mandatory login requirements. Most app users are like me: I’m not keen on setting myself up for a spam storm until I’ve had a chance to determine if a new app is useful. This app appears to be virtually non-functional if you skip the login step. Then the error message start. LOTS of them one after another, and they’re the classic head-scratcher sort that make the user feel stupid because you have no idea what they mean or what to do to stop them. Five minutes of this was my limit. This app sounds like a nice idea, and the well-done illustrations featured in the App Store and the splash screens fooled me into thinking the app was designed by an experienced developer. It’s not. The user experience is just no good. Please hire a good UX designer and try again. You’ll likely find that 10x more people who download the app will continue to actually use it if you improve the UX. The concept is good. However as it stands it goes straight to “Delete”.
I travel a lot and iNat has been a wealth of knowledge for my explorations wherever I may be. I was very hesitant to post at first because I could feel all these very smart contributors and didn’t feel I matched up. But that’s the whole point! Everyone is welcome to post observations and the app is brilliant at suggesting possibilities for what you see so the learning is timely and accessible. I urge everyone to jump in and snap pictures of things you’re curious about and let the wonder unfold! Turn on the location feature so the suggestions are local. You’ll be amazed at the resourcefulness of this app and it’s community! Get outside and become a citizen scientist! And you might notice how much it calms the mind and soothes the soul. They say it boosts the immunity and Vit D levels too! Let’s go iNat!! Right now. Yes, right now!
💙Love this app! I was introduced to iNaturalist through my university but discovered that it was also a great activity for my s/o and I to do together too! We’ve really gotten into it. It’s easy to use and has great species recognition software! 🔻BUT🔻 some of my favorite features currently available on the website are sorely missing from the app. For example, the app does not have the option to search usernames and follow friends, review photos in large grid/Instagram format, or create your own nature guides. If these additions were made to the iNaturalist app, it might actually attract new users already familiar with the popular format as well as making the app a little more visually appealing and fun. It’s functional. It works as a crowdsourcing science app. The GPS location tracking is wonderful. All-in-all it’s my favorite activity to do in my small town during quarantine!
I love this app but social aspect could be improved
This is definitely the best identification app out there. No competition. I’m always recommending it to people as the other apps out there cannot compare. I love that it has plants and animals and it’s great that other people can comment if I’m stuck or misidentify something. The app is so great which is why it’s also a little frustrating that it falls so short. I would just like the following aspect to be improved a lot. It would be so lovely to see what my mom and my boyfriend post coming up on a feed like Instagram or something similarly. I think it would be also sort of cool if events or meet ups could be organized through the platform. Duolingo has worked this out really great where users can actually host events. I really do love this app and hope to see some improvements.
The INaturalist app/site is my favorite nature identification site because it’s interactive with each user able to continually contribute new exhibits whether they are able to solidly identify it or not and each member can confirm identification on species each is familiar with rather than having a fixed and static database that only changes when one person or a group of a few people update it. A few other reasons that it’s my favorite nature identification app is because it’s not limited to just just one thing such as a plant or a bird identification platform, but rather includes everything which is alive (for the most part), it’s free to use & free to contribute to, and it’s always expanding with new real-life exhibits by the day or even by the hour.
I love this app. It has almost single handedly revived my love for going out and just observing nature. I’m always on the lookout for something to document. My increased vigilance, in effort to contribute to the community, has allowed me to see some really cool finds like my first ever Baltimore Oriole! This is an easy five stars to give. My only suggestion would be to add a way to view someone’s profile and see all of their observations! I think that would be a really cool way to see how other specific people are contributing as well. I’d love to see the things my dad observes while out on the job without scrolling all the way to his place of work on the explore map and hoping his observation pops up. I really think this would be a cool and engaging quality of life change.
This app is a helpful tool for anyone and everyone. Helps you identify plants, animals, and fungi via high quality photos you take. Even if the algorithm can’t narrow down ID suggestions to a species, sharing real-time flora and fauna occurrence data means that other users on iNaturalist can also make suggestions and comments. Useful for educational purposes, general curiosity, and even scientific research. A modern way to collect data on wildlife distributions using citizen science. Note- you can save pictures for later if your current location doesn’t have cell service needed for ID suggestions. Just go back to your post and edit it with the suggestion tool and enter location of finding. Overall, I highly recommend this app to anyone, no scientific background required.
I LOVE this app so very very much. It’s a necessary tool in the world we live in and makes logging a breeze - almost. The problem comes with the location tags. I often take my photos in locations where there is no cell/gps/data service. So my solution to that is to take photos and then upload from my phone later when I am on WiFi at home. However, I can’t simply type in an address, coordinates, or anything on the location map to automatically find the location of the plants. I have to literally scroll through the map of the entire world and find the point on it to zoom in where I took the photos. This is a tedious task, especially when I’ll take a dozen photos in a location. I’ve resorted to putting coordinates in the description for now, but I know that won’t be accepted for research grade. Is there any way to fix this or plans to make this process easier in the future?
An awesome and brilliant way to engage with the natural world around us, iNaturalist is a wonderful application and community for anyone interested in the flora and fauna we share the planet with. Inspiring a budding community of naturalists, with the curiosity of John Muir and David Attenborough, the iNaturalist team has developed a truly amazing product. This app instantly and reliably identifies plants, animals, and insects from just a single photo which contributes to scientific research! Not only are you having fun, inspiring curiosity, and satisfying your own personal discovery, but you’re helping with actual scientific research, too! What more could a user want? I can’t recommend this application and community highly enough, I tell all my friends and colleagues about it and visitors to the wildlife conservation facility I volunteer at, too. It’s truly an amazing tool!
I love this app and use it every day. I even use it in my classroom to teach about technology, citizen science, and biodiversity. My students are involved in a school-wide project to post species seen around out campus. Before traveling, I explore my destination in iNaturalist to learn about the flora and fauna that I should look for. A lot of times, I choose my hiking and vacation spots based on the observations that have been posted in different areas. There are a couple of things that I would like to see improved, though. For starters, it would be nice to see more alignment between the app for phone vs for the computer. The phone doesn’t allow for interaction with the community like the computer app does and the maps in the computer app are not nearly as good as those on the mobile app.
A quick, intuitive app for cataloging sightings and sharing data. If I have any complaints, it’s that the app’s camera is fairly low quality, and oftentimes won’t focus in time to capture a clear picture. This shouldn’t be an issue for anyone uploading photos taken with a proper camera, but for those with just a phone it can be quite irritating. Additionally, if you’re not using your current location for a sighting, it can be quite difficult to navigate to the correct location on the map to apply a destination retroactively. For some reason, the search location by name feature is absent when looking for a location in the sighting pop-up.
I’m a big fan of the full-featured iNaturalist web site, and used to dismiss the app as a gimmick for more casual users. But I just did a couple of quick local trips to round out species for the City Nature Challenge, and found myself actually enjoying submitting pictures through the app. My major remaining complaint is that I have to do my cropping in my photo app before I go into iNaturalist, but I think that’s being worked on. Also, I don’t think the app interface gives enough guidance to new users on the fact that they should upload multiple distinct informative pictures of a subject to a single observation, as opposed either to making multiple observations of the same individual or putting multiple different species in the same observation. A slightly more wizard-like interface might help that.
Every hiker, land lover, explorer should get this!
INaturalist is my outdoor companion - I snap photos of every plant / insect I don’t know, and the pier app and all the experts identify it for me almost immediately. I use it at in my backyard, while showing property, on hikes, on vacation, wherever I am! Then if the initial ID is wrong, an expert will pop on and correct me, and we get it right! I love these clarifying updates. What a great way to learn new plants and animals with the help of an easy-to-use app and experts. Wow!! On a recent trip we were low on battery, so I snapped all the photos all day and then uploaded them later in the day. They still had the time stamp and geo-location from when and where I snapped them. I love iNaturalist!
This is one of my all time favorite apps and it has broadened my knowledge of my local flora and fauna so much, however I wanted to write this review because I think there’s one thing that could really be improved upon. I would love the ability to rate the quality of people’s photos and sort the lowest quality ones out of my explore page. It seems like about a quarter of the finds I see are completely unidentifiable or at least questionable just because of the quality of the photo and this may seem selfish but I think the ability to easily tell someone “hey no one is going to be able to figure this one out you should try to get a better photo” without having to comment on every one would really improve everyone’s experience on the app.
I love this app! I’ve used it at home to contribute to a bioblitz at a newly established nature preserve, in my backyard and neighborhood as well as while traveling. It’s not always possible to find field guides to all I see and it’s impractical to carry guides. On our recent trip to Iceland I was able to get all I needed from iNaturalist to learn about all the wonders we saw. I was thrilled to see that some of my observations were slurped up by a group interested in subarctic orchids! Who knew such a group existed?! That is one of the amazing things about modern life, the ability to connect people with shared esoteric interests. Now we just all have to work harder to protect the wild places on our beautiful and amazing earth.
So my review might be a bit of an anomaly because I started using this excellent app sporadically, then took it to Ecuador and the Galapagos on a very special trip, and became obsessed with it there because it’s literally impossible not to see Ecuador and the Galapagos and not become fanatical about our extraordinary natural world. However there is a problem this app uniquely solves that I haven’t seen another app solve before like it, and simply put, this app can make it possible for an amateur Naturalist to learn about their world within a supportive network of professional Naturalists anywhere at any time they decide to start that journey and for that reason I say this app is exceptional on its own merits.
Opens up a whole new world of outdoor learning and fun. So many plants, moths, mushrooms, wildflowers would catch my attention but I never knew what they were. This app helps identify them quickly and also lets you find other instances of the same species. Want to know what other species have been seen in your area? Click the explore button and view sightings on a map or in a list. The app is really well thought out - obviously designed and continuously refined by people who actually use it and listen to feedback. For those of you who use eBird - one of my other favorite apps - this is kind of like eBird but for all species - with the added bonus of helping you identify the species you don’t know!
Actually free nature dictionary beautiful collections of hd wildlife you won’t find elsewhere
I’ve installed so many “free” encyclopedia/dictionary apps of wildlife/plant/fungi/insect libraries or identification only to be met with paywalls or subscriptions I understand the devs need funding but we all can agree libraries of such information should be as free as the animals we capture through the lenses of our cameras so the scientific community can accurately gather data young/curious minds get educated or even become biologists or care takers of some kind truly impacted my day to day life huge shout out for having this free other “free” apps don’t get it if I wanted to pay for it would’ve gone to a 2.99 download button LOL!
iNaturalist is a social network for sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature. The primary goal is to connect people to nature, and the secondary goal is to generate scientifically valuable biodiversity data from these personal encounters. iNaturalist helps you identify plants and animals with visually similar suggestions and verification by dedicated contributors. Get connected with a community of over a million scientists and naturalists who can help you learn more about nature! By recording and sharing your observations, you'll create research-quality data for scientists working to better understand and protect nature. KEY FEATURES • Identification suggestions: Take or import a photo and view the top 10 most visually similar species matches and tap through to get more information. You can view these suggestions even before creating an account. • Feedback from our community: Create an account to share your observations and start a conversation about what you saw. Can’t identify the organism? Start with a broad identification like “plants” or “fungi” so others with more expertise can find it and refine the identification. • Keep a record of all living things: Build your life list by posting to iNaturalist. Where, when, and what you saw is the basis of each observation you create. • Grounded in science: Every identification is connected to the tree of life, which means you can search for broad classifications like “Ferns” or “Fungi” as well as species-level identifications like “Humpback Whale” (and everything in between). • Advancing science & conservation: Millions of observations created and identified by the iNaturalist community are shared with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility where they are used to advance scientific understanding of biodiversity through open data and open science. • Enabling citizen science and community science: Join any of the tens of thousands of projects around the world on iNaturalist to draw attention to and collect data about particular species or places. • Not-for-profit: iNaturalist is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the United States. iNaturalist is free for anyone to use thanks to the generous support of many organizations and individuals. Thank you! • No hidden charges: This app is truly free because we believe nature is for everyone. • Best for wild plants and animals: The iNaturalist community is better at identifying wild plants and animals than those in gardens or horticulture. Get outside and find what’s wild! • Control how your location is shared: Set the privacy to obscured (only general location is shared) or private (no location is shared at all, but much harder for others to help identify). The locations of species at risk from disturbance are automatically obscured. • More than a mobile app: iNaturalist has even more extensive features and tools for learning and exploration. Get the full experience at inaturalist.org! • 35+ languages: iNaturalist has been translated into dozens of languages thanks to multilingual enthusiasts who want to see the community grow. • A global network: iNaturalist is used in every country on earth! In many countries, we have formal agreements with local organizations to promote iNaturalist. Use this app for contributing to all iNaturalist Network sites, including Naturalista (Mexico and Colombia), iNaturalist.NZ (New Zealand), iNaturalist.ca (Canada), Biodiversity4All (Portugal), iNaturalistAU (Australia), iNaturalistPa (Panama), iNaturalistEc (Ecuador), ArgentiNat (Argentina), iNaturalistil (Israel), and iNaturalistFi (Suomi/Finland).
