Seek by iNaturalist

This would be so much fun if it could identify more things. Even a clear picture of a leaf is difficult, let alone a moving insect.

Good on plants, but it says that a lot of of them are dots but not good on animals because it says that a chair is a human and a design on a door or a snake

I have learned about many species, especially plants, with this app. It’s accurate and useful… except when it’s not. Every once in a while it’s wildly inaccurate, such as when it misidentified a 15-foot dogwood as 1-foot tropical houseplant. Other quirks are that it frequently locks up after I take a photo so the species doesn’t get recorded in my life list unless I close the app and try again; and there is no clear way to tell it its identification was wrong. I’ll keep using it because it’s more useful than not, but I’m looking forward to future improvements.

My kids love this app and constantly ask me to pull it out to find out what plant or insect they’re looking at. It’s been such a great tool for homeschooling and just plain curiosity! ***BUT my major complaint is it never tells you if something is dangerous, toxic, or any kind of “DO NOT TOUCH” or “DO NOT APPROACH” kind of warnings… it doesn’t even give you the full information on each species, just the very beginning of a wiki page. There are many finicky glitches, but if this app gave the most important information immediately about hazardous species, I would give this app 5 stars! Countless times I’ve had to patiently work through the seek app to identify the species, then I have to open up my browser and type in the name and ask whether it’s toxic/harmful, and then finally get my answer. Sometimes I found out too late because of this long process, and my kid had already grabbed a toxic burr, or a poisonous spider got away in the house, or a highly toxic beetle already hid in the garden, etc. There could be far worse situations with other animals/insects/plants if the app doesn’t add this feature. It’s a huge frustration, but I still use it because I can at least identify (hopefully accurately) the species, then make sure everyone is safe before researching it. Just so so wish it could be as fast as a camera click in finding out whether it’s hazardous. Please add this!!

I have used this app for years, and I love ID-ing plants, birds, animals. I’ve recommended it to countless people in the past, but with the newer AI powered version, it’s not doing great. Today it told me that ducks (with green heads) were a “canada goose”. Yesterday it claimed a pelican (with a trademark long pelican beak) was a “common merganser”. I have been using it to check invasive plants in my yard, and it’s misidentifying those as well. I thought it would get better over time but this is embarrassing… I miss its former reliability.

I love this app so much, I am always finding out new stuff and it’s so easy to use!

App does not sync with website so you must use both. The year is 2026. Ridiculous

Loved this app but used to be able to upload a photo for identification. No longer works. Glitch in the latest update?

This app does a lot of cool stuff! There are two reasons I don’t use it: - The initial safety “Remember screen” is not safe at all and a poor design choice. At least provide a setting to turn it off! I appreciate the warning and fully agree it should be there a few times, but not as a persistent message. This has the unintended effect of drawing a person’s awareness away from nature and into the app, ironically leading to them becoming less aware of their surroundings. App deloading can make this an even more frustrating experience especially when low power mode leads to that occurring more, compounded with this being more common for people going on long hikes, and even further since people that are into long hikes could also be more into Seeking things as they go along which drains battery further and thus low power mode. - It should give a link to the species after identification to quickly get to more details about the capture. This could be a direct link to Wikipedia or a prebuilt Google search link, anything to just get the species name easier into a place it can be searched for. EDIT: the link does exist, but only if you are logged into iNaturalist - On the species page, why can you not view other photos of the plant fullscreen?!

Inconsistent with correctly identifying species