Seek by iNaturalist

It used to work a lot better. After taking a picture once it has been identified, you get the scroll of death as you wait for the picture to save. My camera has went into sleep mode waiting 10 minutes for the app to save the ID'd picture . I don't know what changed in the updates over the last year but go back to what it was before!! I have recommended this app to so many people.

The app has a long standing software bug that is unresolved. Overtime, taking a photo with the app has taken an increasingly long time. Now, the app can no longer use the camera to take a photo, it just hangs. It will still ID things without snapping a photo, but can't save the observations anymore. Using the app to ID existing photos has never worked very well, so that is not a good option, either.

Works relatively quickly and accurately identifying things in the live view. However, when I go to take a picture to save the observation, the app freezes and does not save. Also works poorly on identifying previously taken pictures in gallery. Last event was winter 2024. Seems like it might not be updated.

Edit: It never identifies anything anymore. It was good at first. The overall app is good. It's easy to navigate, and it seems to work pretty well most of the time. The camera is the worst part. 7/10 times it won't identify what I'm looking at, but gets stuck at family or genus. If the camera quality were a little better and it could ID quicker, it would definitely get another star or two.

this app is awesome, its like having a Poke-dex but for real animals and plants! so much fun to use, and i finally get to know the names of the species in the area ive always seen, but never been able to identify. I had to change to 3 stars however, because I frequently scan species and get a mis identification. You need to add a "flag this ID for review" or something like that for when we don't feel the identification is accurate.

It's great for identifying, but sometimes it takes a few seconds to get the picture, I would just stand there pointing the phone at a cat or lizard... It's awful when fast insects are involved... I don't have a professional camera :/ (I like the challanges though). PS: The app appears to be... Horrible... When identifying fishes, but there are no ads! So I guess I'll give it a 5-star review! Edit: I've downloaded the app again, it doesn't seem to even attempt to identify the creatures I picture

I really like this app. It's pretty intuitive to use, and has done a good job identifying backyard plants and weeds! I'd love it even more if there was an option to read more information about a particular species. The app pulls an excerpt from Wikipedia, but doesn't allow you to click on the full Wikipedia entry to finish reading. You can't even copy/paste the scientific name because the app doesn't allow you to highlight it.

This app is really fun and addictive when it works. It's forced me to go outside and get excited when it rains, etc. BUT! There is one major thing that I completely dislike and wish the apps creators would fix. It's when I take a photo of a species. I get the species name and then I take the photo. It'll change from the species name, into the species family even though I was shown the name of the species (ex. Long bodied cellar spider, I took a photo and now they believe it could be an arachnid)

I love this app, and the more I use it, the more family likes it too. What would be a really neat feature is when identifying birds or other animals, it should have an option to hear the sound the bird or animal makes. Im no animal expert, but there should be an option for when there's a wrong identification so it doesn't save my observation incorrectly. I had one bird be identified and I knew just by looking at it, it was not correct.

Breaks gestures on Motorola phones. Took me a month to figure out why my flashlight and camera weren't working properly. Aside from that, the app itself is cool if... finicky, and I want to like it, but it's not pleasant to use. Would be better if it let you use your cameras macro mode for close up pictures, but since it doesn't it can't identify anything small.

I love a lot about this app. It makes observations simple and seeing the progress as it develops can be informative. That said, it crashes a lot or seems to stop guessing and often you have to restart the app. Most importantly though, there is no way to save your observations if you get a new device. If you do not upload to inaturalist at the time of the observation, you cannot do it later. There is no export feature. New device means you lose everything, incl achievements.

really amazing idea, I love the gaming twist in identifying species, as well as the ability to ID more than plants! on the downside, the AI is rough at best. I was using a different app that wanted $20 a month just to identify plants, and it would immediately recognize some more common plants. This app on the other hand, can't get past "Dicots" on a spearmint...

Take a single picture and often get it identified- plant, bird, toads, slug... great! I love the challenges! A fun game like real pokemon. Could be better: App so far has not done well with trees or spiders. In general, if it can't identify with single picture there should be an option to have multiple pictures work to identifying single thing. This is handled on other applications better. Still, I use it frequently and have found the challenges fun, though difficult due to app limitations

This is still my favorite species identification app, but it seems development is getting a bit stale. It crashes and freezes frequently, tested across three different phones. The achievements max out rapidly without room to grow. Progress is not synced across devices despite being logged into iNaturalist, so if you change your phone you start over. Would love to see some updates, like breaking the plants observations out into more specific categories, like arachnids and mollusks are.

This app struggled to identify the simplest things. A perfectly clear shot of a blue Jay, that might be a bird. A picture of a squirrel, well, it's definitely an animal but can't get anymore detailed than that. A clear image of a racer, well it could be a snake. Also it takes forever to hone in to the point of identifying a creature. I'd rather just use the Google camera search. It can at least tell that I'm looking at a turtle.

Love the app, great for IDing plants VERY frustrating for animals. Animals move. I want to be able to lock in an order. I know it's a frog/toad, stop guessing it's an insect. Also so frustrating when it shows a genus, you take a pic it goes all the way back to 'idk an animal?' I also want more info on how it makes the ID and how sure it is. Can't tell a detail from the pic? Need a number of toes? Color? Ask me. Show me options for what it may be so I can narrow it down, like birds on Merlin.

It's a cool app, but it'll give me the incorrect species 25% of the time. It told me that a bug with a very specific marking that set it apart as something completely different was a paper wasp, which looked nothing alike. The quality of the camera through the app is SO bad that it is basically unusable. I have to take a normal picture of everything and send it through the app if I am photographing anything small, which I often am because I always want to know what spider is in my house.

This app has a lot of potential. The idea behind it and some of the features are really cool. However, it is a pain to use. It often kicks you out. The camera takes a while to load and freezes often. The camera takes too long to take a photo, often turns blurry, and focuses on the background. Plants it is okay at, but forget about animals. It often cycles between class and family, rarely making it to genus. Cool idea but the current version is incredibly frustrating to use.

I liked the concept. But in reality it's frustrating at times. I use it to catalog my personal findings, but some species are almost impossible to register. There's no clear way to delete discoveries that's are falsely identified. There should be an option for me to manually enter species when the AI fails, as well as an option to say WHERE I found it. Overall it's been fun, but difficult to use at times. There are better apps solely for identification purposes.

Probably the most useful app I've downloaded in a long time. In addition, the source of the app and their third party data sharing and retention policy make me feel comfortable allowing access to images, location, etc. That's something that is hard to navigate these days (especially for free apps!). I've had no issues identifying plants and trees.