Like you can from the website.
I edited the title to make it a little more clear. Can you please clarify what you mean? Would you want to be able to annotate other userās observations or just your own? Do you use iOS or Android?
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My own would be the priority, although being able to annotate others observations would be helpful. I use Android. Android open source for the win!
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Oh yes, I just realised today that itās missing on the app. I often annotate observations with āLife Stageā and āAlive or Deadā. I canāt do this while uploading from the app. Having this option in the app would be nice.
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Donāt forget to vote for it then! Thereās only one vote right now.
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Yes, I just wanted to request it. If the main purpose of the app is adding observations then it should unable us to add them with all the useful informations - annotations, tags and even fields.
I know there is an option to choose 3 annotations when the observation is already added but having the option in the uploader itself would be much more useful and handy.
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We have added the ability to annotate observations in the Android app since this request was made. It canāt be done when uploading, but if you go to any observation and swipe up, youāll see the option to annotate the observation.
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Yes, I know, I even mentioned that, but it would be much more convenient to have it in the uploader. Since I add more observations consecutively lately, I chose to rather not click on every observation separately to add these annotations because it would take me hours (also 'cause it loads very slowly on the app for me).
Tags are another thing. I donāt know how much they are used among the iNat community but there is absolutely no way you can add them on the app, so someone who is only using the app probably donāt even know about this possibility.
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Looks like Tony was replying to the topic poster, not to your comment.
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Ups, I havenāt realized :D
But still I would vote for these sections to appear not only in the app but right in the app uploader (if that would be technically possible).
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Me too! I donāt use tags, but annotations in the mobile uploader would definitely be appreciated :)
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To me this is always the push and pull of the mobile apps: trying keeping it simple and not overwhelming for new and casual users (who are the ones more likely to be using the app) yet including some of the more esoteric features. I think the current set-up is a good compromise, but Iām not someone who uses the app a lot (and I use iOS anyway, which lacks any annotation functionality).
Ken-ichi wrote about this in the recent(ish) Reddit AMA:
IMO, part of what makes apps appealing is that the reduced form factor favors simple designs that are easier to use, so adding more query features might actually just make the apps worse for the majority of users even while it made them better for superusers. That said, our Android app already supports a lot of query functionality, and hopefully weāll get the iPhone app to the same level at some point. For everything else, please use the website.
Hmm, maybe as a better compromise you could have annotation and tag sections partially hidden in the uploader, e.g. tap on them and the section expands, or use drop-down menus, or both.
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FWIW, weāve had the ability to add annotations in the Android app since October 2018. Tagsā¦ Iām less convinced we really need themā¦ at all, let alone in the mobile apps. I think the only time I find them useful is when Iām trying to search for something non-taxonomic and non-geographic, e.g. my gall observations, but adding the word āgallā to the description would serve the same purpose.
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Tags are a make or break feature for doing a bioblitz. I have a group of friends, we would like to associate all of our observations for a specific event or theme. Adding tags is the best way to do this ā it is then easy to search on the iNat webpage for that tag and see all of our āthemedā identifications. Problem: tags are only available on the webpage, so mobile users cannot easily participate in our bioblitz. Any other suggestion on how folks easily associate mobile observations would be appreciated!
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To clarify: for an existing BioBlitz with an existing Project page, adding mobile observations to a project works great. But for more informal settings, adding tagged observations is important. For example, when the native plant society has a plant walk, it is nice when we can all tag our observations for that event. It doesnāt make sense to create a project specifically for that one day.
Thanks~
I so much agree with @conorflynn
Tagging is so useful for classifying observations related to whatever-you-want, and avoids the need of creating a project. Actually, this is something useful for iNaturalist as it would avoid proliferation of unneeded projects.
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I do so much support this feature as well !!
Tags are part of many activities I do with my students: a tag could be the code for a practical homework task (i.e. āHW.04ā), other tags could be task-specific related (i.e. āNATā/"INT for species native or introduced to our council), and so on.
This helps a lot in creating summaries of students activity for a specific task, because the API permits to search by task.
The only problem is ā¦ my students do so much like doing homeworks outside on their phones. But they will not like working on iNaturalist website to tag everything again when back in home or in the school.
So, tags are needed in apps, and they are needed from the beginning (when the student creates the observation, not needing to come back to tag it later)
In my case, I need each student to be able to at least annotate his/her own observations.
BUT @tiwane asked a very good question: it would be very helpful if they could work in groups, so they could also collaborate (i.e., they help each other cross-tagging their observations).
Or I could even assign tasks where students can tag other iNaturalistsā observations and then I collect these tags using the API in order to correct their answers.
I was not aware this was even possible. Where in the web version should I go to be able to tag other peopleās observations so my tags are api-searchable?
Annotations donāt seem possible in the iOS app. That would be very helpful if we could add annotations there!