Seek by iNaturalist
June 20, 2024
More About Seek by iNaturalist
• Identify wildlife, plants, and fungi and learn about the organisms all around you
• Earn badges for observing different types of species and participating in challenges
OPEN THE CAMERA AND START SEEKING!
Found a mushroom, flower, or bug, and not sure what it is? Open up the Seek Camera to see if it knows!
Drawing from millions of wildlife observations on iNaturalist, Seek shows you lists of commonly recorded insects, birds, plants, amphibians, and more in your area. Scan the environment with the Seek Camera to identify organisms using the tree of life. Add different species to your observations and learn all about them in the process! The more observations you make, the more badges you’ll earn!
This is a great app for families who want to spend more time exploring nature together, and for anyone who wants to learn more about the life all around them.
KID-SAFE
Seek does not require registration and does not collect any user data by default. Some user data will be collected if you choose to sign in with an iNaturalist account, but you must be over 13 or have your parents permission to do so.
Seek will ask permission to turn on location services, but your location is obscured to respect your privacy while still allowing species suggestions from your general area. Your precise location is never stored in the app or sent to iNaturalist unless you sign in to your iNaturalist account and submit your observations.
Our image recognition technology is based on observations submitted to iNaturalist.org and partner sites, and identified by the iNaturalist community.
Seek is part of iNaturalist, a not-for-profit organization. Seek was made by the iNaturalist team with support from the California Academy of Sciences, the National Geographic Society, Our Planet on Netflix, WWF, HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, and Visipedia.
Latest Version
2.16.0
June 20, 2024
iNaturalist
Education
Android
3,019,014
Free
org.inaturalist.seek
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User Reviews
Tom Trask
3 years ago
It's better than nothing. It would be nice if it wouldn't just give up when it can't get to a species also maybe don't go back to dicot so quickly (if I didn't move the camera off this plant, it shouldn't have to start all over at dicot). It's great when it works, disappointing when it tries and fails and just burns up some battery and data bandwidth (which isn't as freely available in the sticks, where I need it, as it is in my back yard).
A Google user
5 years ago
I love the idea of this app, but it has some critical issues: Can't transfer observations between devices. Got a new phone? You have to start over. Doesn't take your location into account when identifying species. Already has my location, why not use it for ID? Camera lags, zoom is choppy, ID photo capture is slow to react/won't identify by the time it responds. Didn't have this problem before. No option to edit date/location on sightings or option for input on species ID. Very disappointing.
Christopher O'Keefe
2 years ago
I used to love this app. It did a great job (as far as i could tell, at least) identifying plants & animals. During about the last year or so, however, the app's ability to id anything had declined. If it does id something out seems much more likely to get it wrong but most of the time it struggles to get past genus to id a species. It cycles between a relatively useless category ("dicots" for example) and, at best, genus. I don't know what happened but I'm really disappointed.
A Google user
6 years ago
I really like the idea of this app. However, the implementation could use some work. I would like to be able to add IDs manually rather than rely on computer ID (which doesn't know what to do with my ferret). Also, a lot of your images are just not showing for me. To be completely honest, I feel like this app's basic function (earn badges for species) should be integrated into the main INaturalist app.
Ellie Hoyt
1 year ago
It was good when I first used it. Then, all of the sudden, the app will not stay open for longer than 30 seconds and it crashes, saying "critical failure occured". I uninstalled and reinstalled, the issue did not fix. It's been going on for a month now, and I have unfortunately given up. Thankfully, inaturalist still works, and I upload my photos directly through there.
A Google user
5 years ago
I absolutely LOVE the idea of the app...the actual product, not so much. The problem is heavily in the camera. It opens slow and freeze up a lot. It doesn't matter how many angles you point your camera from or how well the picture is taken, it will just not identify anything! Then sometimes it will get really close to identifying something but then you accidently move you camera by a milimeter and you're right back to the beginning 😔 This could be a great app but PLEASE fix the camera!
Kara MacDowell
1 year ago
Great at identifying and giving information about the flora and fauna around you. I love the challenges and achievements as well. What I would improve is the ability to sort by dates observed. I would also like the camera to be better. My phone's camera is amazing with resolution and focus ability, but through the seek app, the resolution is horrible, and the ability to focus is lacking. These things knock a star off, even though this is my favorite plant ID app.
Vaun's Photography
1 year ago
The concept is worth 5 stars. But the reality is lacking. Focus should remain steady. Once the species is identified, the focus should be locked until the photo is taken. Instead, photos often come out blurry. Plant ID should be a part of the saved image info inside the phone's gallery, not just inside the app. I would like the option to use my photos from the gallery instead of taking a new photo with the apps camera.
Kelly B.
1 year ago
Sometimes it gets an identification almost immediately, but most of the time you'll be standing trying different angles for a couple minutes before you get frustrated and give up. Many times I've tried to id a plant and instead of scanning the leaf right in front of the lens it'll blur that and bring the grass 20 feet away into focus. Would be nice if you could use the flash when in poor light conditions, but for some reason the app disables it.
Andrew Richard
1 year ago
The ability to manually focus would raise this to 4 stars. The autofocus usually focuses on the background and not on the object itself, irregardless of how many times you tap the screen. As for identification, it usually works fine, but if data is insufficient on iNaturalist, it'll never give you a proper ID. Thankfully, you can post to iNaturalist to help "train" the app. But the camera focus issue needs to be addressed sooner than later.
Christina Burch
1 year ago
Seems to work pretty well with plants,as long as the wind isn't moving. Sometimes plants isn't identified either. Animals and insects both are almost impossible to identify, even with a perfectly clear pic and from different angles. If the animal/plant is moving, forget it. I love the entire concept of this app, it just needs a lot more work to make it fully functional nd useful since I get more unidentified items from it than those that are identified.
A Google user
6 years ago
Just the app I have been looking for :) would have been 5 stars but for a few features that are missing. The Camara does not take full control for zoom and focus on my HTC 10 which makes some small species difficult to capture. Also it would be nice if when trying to select an existing photo for identification it understood folders as scrolling through every single image is tedious when I could put images into a specific folder. Otherwise a great app.
Kevin Willett
1 year ago
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.
Allan Buccola
1 year ago
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.
ruben vaughn
1 year ago
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.
Thomas Slusher (pupslush)
1 year ago
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.
confetti
1 year ago
it's okay for what it is, strangely works well on identifying bugs, not so much with plants. it always gets stuck at genus even if there is an extremely clear view of the plant and its leaves. not sure if this is my phone being broken or the app, but it only lets me take 3-5 pictures, crashes, and then once i reopen and take more, it needs me to clear the cache. almost unusable.
C P
1 year ago
As others have said, the app itself is great although it can struggle identifying clear photos of relatively easy species...) HOWEVER the fact there is no way to sync your data anywhere and if you switch devices, you lose everything is insane... Add in a way to backup/save/sync your data (stand alone or to inaturalist) and its easily a 5* app
Gigi Behrends
1 year ago
Pretty good app. It's useful if you want to find out something about a species, and it's well organized. But here's the downside. Sometimes when I try to identify a species it, 1, doesn't do anything and nothing pops up. Or 2, it gets stuck on Family or Class, and it won't do anything else, and then I have to use Google, which sometimes also isn't helpful. It also sometimes can't identify simple things that even I know. Please fix this. Other than that, great app.
Derek Wolf
1 year ago
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.
