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Seek by iNaturalist

Identify plants & animals

Ratings

Age

4+

Category

Education

Languages

English

Featured In

Great Apps for Kids Ages 9 to 11
Tinker with coding, explore space, and more.

Tips & Walkthrough

Gameplays

Screenshot

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Q&A

Ratings & Reviews

Utterly addictive but much in need of improvement
Thu Aug 08 2019 Kaiaim

I simply can’t stop doing this. That said there are a lot of issues. The other reviews have pointed many of these out so I’m gonna focus on the one that bothers me the most and that should be the easiest to fix, the photo management. It should be possible to import a picture into the app so you don’t have to keep interacting with your camera roll. I often have to take five or six pictures of a single thing to get a recognition, and of course often I don’t get any at all. As a result my photo roll is extremely cluttered. However it’s hard to delete the ones that are not usable because you have to toggle back-and-forth between this app and the photo roll and try to recall which of five or six very similar pictures you can delete. The net result is I usually end up deleting one that was recognizable. It would also be nice if you could look from the app into a folder or album on the photo roll so as to keep these pictures separate from your regular photo stream. It would also be great if you could replace the first picture you took of something with a later better picture. I look forward to future integrations

Really love the app but I have issues sometimes
Thu Nov 02 2023 PicFlkr

Sometimes the app auto scans things while I'm trying to scan something else and by the time I get whatever pop-up out of the way (same observation or challenge complete, etc) the thing I was actually trying to scan goes away into the wild :( other times I try to scan something 1ft from me, getting multiple angles and still no scan, it just stays on the second to last bubble never able to get the final result. I know what the species is too because I see it on the home page at the location I'm at. It would be nice to just go "okay you can't scan this, I'll just upload the picture I got and set it to this species" or at least have a way to let you pick it if it looks similar to one you're labeling it as. The species I've had that issue with is the Great-Tailed Grackle. I've been scanning different ones for 4 days now and still haven't been able to get Seek to get it but have the most clear picture of one. Sometimes the animals are super well camouflaged too and Seek just can't see them at all. It's frustrating sometimes but overall the app has been working fine and has had no problems. Plants work more compared to animals it seems. Can't really get bugs like ticks and mosquitos, but I guess I can blame my camera for that one. iPhone 12. This review would be 5 stars if it wasn't for those small issues I have. All in all amazing app and I use it all the time now.

Utterly addicting, but not perfect
Sat Apr 20 2024 SarcastricFringehead

This app is often pretty helpful at identifying plants and animals, and is similar to Pokémon Go, except that it’s actually practical and teaches you stuff. That being said, there are a few issues. I’ve noticed that sometimes the app has a very hard time identifying particular species, including pine trees, bears, and crows, and is very ineffective at identifying deep sea creatures. Often it will misidentify things (leading to some pretty hilarious misidentifications, such as confusing a pheasant for a siamese fighting fish, a cougar for a dromedary camel, a clouded leopard for a leopard shark, and a kodiak bear for a domestic dog). Other times however, it can be pretty good at identifying some rather obscure organisms as well, so plusses and minuses. Currently my biggest issue with the app though (which is what prompted me to write this review) is the recent update. Before, it seemed as if it was easier to identify things through saved photographs than it was at identifying photos actually taken by the app’s camera. However, with one of the recent updates, the identifying previously saved photos on your device feature seems to have taken a serious downgrade, and now actually seems to do an even worse job than the actual in app seek camera. Could you guys at iNaturalist please fix this issue? Also, could you allow SeekApp to recognize and better identify certain plants and animals, particularly domestic pigs and deep sea creatures (I’m surprised the app doesn’t know what a pig is!)? Thank you!

Ok, but needs improvement
Sun Oct 14 2018 Person that didn't do this

This app is pretty good, but it does need a lot of work. I downloaded Seek after iNaturalist, because I wanted an app that immediately identifies the species for you instead of having to wait for others on the app to do it. I really like the concept, but it does have some bugs that need fixing. First, the database that identifies species needs to be cleaned up. The picture has to be very clear for it to be identified, otherwise it won’t work. Once when I took a picture of a moth in bad lighting, it identified it as a species I knew it very clearly wasn’t, and there was no way for me to change it. Also the camera in the app won’t let you zoom in, so I have to take a picture with my phone’s camera and then input the picture in the app. Lastly, I wish the app tracked specifically how many of each kind of organism you find (reptiles, mammals, etc). It will reward you when you reach a milestone of 5, 15, etc. finds, but it doesn’t tell you anywhere how many of each you have. It has the overall total of organisms, but it doesn’t list something like, “you have 11 mammals, only 4 more to go till your next achievement!” But despite all the bugs, it is a pretty cool app in theory. I like how it awards badges for certain numbers of organisms found, that’s a fun idea. I do get annoyed when it won’t accurately identify species sometimes, but I’ll keep using it and hopefully it will improve.

My fav app, hoping to see more features
Mon Jun 16 2025 Ocean_eli

I’m a biologist and this app has genuinely been life-changing. This app is actually now the action button on my iPhone! My partner & I love to nerd out with identifying different fauna & flora and this app makes it so easy to not only do that, but to document those things in a life list format. I LOVE how this app makes it a game to get outside and find new species you wouldn’t normally think of. This app is now the reason that I’ve gotten very into birding, realizing just how many species we have here in Florida! I also love that each species uses the photo I took as a little “profile photo”, it makes it feel like Pokémon. Also love that this app makes it easy to directly link your account with iNaturalist, which is a great extension of Seek. My only complaints are 1) that the app has stopped doing challenges - the challenges were a very fun excuse to get outside and try to find something new! My partner and I loved them 2) the app does not have a way to track or really do anything with re-sightings, which makes things less exciting as you begin to document most of the common species in your area. I’d love to be able to see how many times I’ve re-sighted a species, or maybe some features that do something with re-sightings.

Best, best, best gift.
Sat Apr 24 2021 Fluxions!

This app is the best gift I got in many years. I have learned the names of all that’s around me, and there is so much more richness than I ever realized. I also love being able to read more about each plant or animal, and teach my daughter and grandsons all that we get to see, in backyards, on city streets, parks, woods. This app tells me, so quickly, and with great accuracy. It does it scientifically, so I also know the order, family, genus. And the pictures are recorded so I don’t lose the learning. I am using this to make a collection with my grandsons. To make games, etc. It makes outdoor time even more fun, and we see and notice the richness and plethora of what we have, even on a city street. I used to have to take guidebooks and slow down to look up each one. In just five minutes in a less used part of my backyard I’ve identified 8 plants I wasn’t quite sure of, or learned new. Get this app! Teach your children. Their eyes and love for their rich world will never be the same. It’s like being in a room where you know no one, or being in a room where you know every face and name.

Addictive, but…
Fri Jun 30 2023 Momster99

I have taken obvious pictures that won’t connect and many that connect to the wrong species. For instance, I took a picture of an obvious bumblebee from nearly every angle with no luck and an Asian lady beetle pupa was connected to a zigzag ladybird. Bugs aside, I did recognize a few errors with plants. It would be better to have a “this is wrong, let me suggest a correction” option. Also, it is so difficult to focus the camera. It connects a blurry image, but refuses to connect the image when I spend far too much time trying to focus. I end up leaving the app to use the native iPhone app. All that said, I do realize how new this type of matching technology is so I can only deduct one star and continue taking pictures of everything nature brings me. One more thing, it would be nice to have poisonous stuff highlighted. Very cool app. *edit—it should tag photos with what Seek identified them as and have the ability to cycle through photos based on identification. I’m trying to snap pictures at different stages, so I know what is what when it is time to cleanup the yard. It would also be nice to have the pictures document which plants most attract beneficial insects.

Had to start over when I got a new phone
Sat Jun 05 2021 M. Lucero

This is an amazing app, but I have two major complaints, both of them similar. There is no way for users to back up their data, so when I got a new phone I lost all the hundreds of observations I’d made and many badges and achievements. They really need to add the ability to back up your account progress in iCloud or something like that. The second complaint is that when you make an observation but the app can’t identify it, and then upload the photo to iNaturalist where it is later identified positively, you don’t get credit for that in either your observations or your challenges/achievements. Adding a sync ability between your Seek account and your iNat account would be a huge incentive to upload observations and it could also potentially solve the first problem I mentioned as well and eliminate the need for an iCloud save option. Again, I love this app, but making these changes would drastically improve the user’s experience and motivate people to continue using the app after upgrading to a new phone when many might give up on it upon learning they have to start from zero again.