Reviews for iNaturalist

Amazing community to upload and find species of living things. The map exploration is fun to find some of my favorite plants and look out for plants during a hike. Very useful tool. App crashes when loading observations, browsing the explore tab, and made my phone freeze several times, but it might be my phone. But it still worth 5 stars. Hoping for future updates.

I love that I can identify almost anything and that it helps contribute to science. But I really wish once identified I could get some more information about the plant/ animal etc. Especially if it is native/ invasive. It would also be great if the conservation status was listed, and some tips on how we could help or encourage that type of butterfly into our garden (for example)

I think a lot if people misunderstand what the app does. It allows you to upload observations to the iNaturialist website, where people from all over the world can help narrow down your observation, which in turn documents wildlife. The AI learns from that, but since it can only learn from data that's wild, it can't help with the things like garden plants. That's where gardeners like me come in and try to help. 😁 it's a great community, and I've learned so much about the world outside my garden.

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.

Wonderful concept but poor execution. App is very slow and freezes often. Also, when you try to ID an obscure species, the app will show you a small number of reference photos or even no photos, even when others users have contributed countless research grade photos of the species. That makes it hard to ID. Seems like the reference photos are being pulled off Wikipedia although I'm not sure. Why not use photos users have contributed?

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.

A great citizen science app! It's like a combination tricorder and logbook. I originally wanted something to help me ID what I saw on dog walks and remote work sites. I find it much easier to use the app to log an observation than the full website. The automatic ID feature is fairly strong for animals, a little less so for plants that aren't in bloom. If you prefer not to share observation data by default, try the iNaturalist Seek app instead, a pretty good casual field guide.

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.

Basically Pokemon Go for nature. I love this app. My wife is into plants and I am into birds so we are constantly snapping shots of nature and posting our findings. The best part is how the app will suggest what it thinks you are posting so if you don't know a species, it will suggest one for you. I have learned a lot from this app, it really opens up your world when you learn new species. Only thing I would change is the ability to follow friends on the mobile version.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

As a beginner at identifying mushrooms this app has been fantastic, I'm just annoyed that ever since a recent update (I believe?) i can't upload pictures that I've already taken. I always get told "photo format is not supported" this didn't happen when I first got the app. I can still take a photo from within the app, just can't upload from my gallery.

I LOVE THIS APP! I wish everyone had it, and would be amazed by the fact that nearly every ant, fly, flower, blade of grass has a name and story! It would be fun if it was more game-ified I wish there was a little more social aspect, I'd love to be more able to follow my friends and see what they've been recording/observing, and help ID! I couldn't find a way on the app to follow friends, but found them online, but then there doesn't seem to be any benefit once you're back on the app.

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!

Amazing, but... It crashes frequently, especially when trying to suggest an ID. Lacking basic UI options. You can't sort anything. Searching by word is rudimentary. Limited filtering inconsistent with website. Can't delete unintentional IDs, except through website. Many people don't post helpful/useful observations. "Unknown Species" is abused by lazy people. Posting requirements are lax, resulting in a lot of less helpful data (e.g, not req'd to ID if a plant is flowering). etc...

Unfortunately I'm having similar issues as other users where the app tells me "you have to be connected to the internet to do that!" despite *being on the internet*, and then my submissions just sit and sit and are unable to be uploaded. It seems like I tried doing 1 submission weeks ago where I didn't have connectivity at the time and literally anything after that can't get processed correctly, so it seems like a "stuck in queue" issue. I hope they get it fixed, I really want to use it!

This app is super useful for being able to identify different types of animal/plant/fungus species. It's honestly pretty amazing. Being able to track which species you've seen in the wild is very cool, and the community around the app is incredible. However, I can't rate it higher simply because this app can sometimes be very buggy. Crashes are somewhat common and posts can sometimes refuse to be shown. Still, very cool app. Would recommend.