URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: N/A
Screenshots of what you are seeing: (Will add next time it happens)
Description of problem: Frequently, when trying to add an observation on the Android app, the first image in the list is “broken”. The image shows as the default image icon, and clicking “What did you see?” displays a blank white space where the image should be and shows a loading icon indefinitely. Sometimes the image is in this “broken” state as soon as Edit Observation appears, but sometimes it shows normally until I click “What did you see?”, then shows that blank white space and is replaced by the default icon once I return back to the “Edit Observation” screen.
Step 1: Select an image (or multiple images) in my phone gallery, then hit “share”. Choose the iNaturalist app.
Step 2: Once the iNaturalist app opens to the Edit Observation page, the first image may be broken already. If not, hit “What did you see?”
Step 3: The space where the image normally appears may be blank white, in which case going back to “Edit Observation” will show the first image being broken.
This doesn’t happen every time, but it happens extremely often – maybe a third of the time, and often when it fails one time it requires 1-3 more attempts before the image finally works correctly. It’s really frustrating.
This happens to me too, much less frequently, but still regularly - maybe once in 20 or 50 times. I think it might happen more when my phone is short on storage, or something like that.
Which device are you using? And are you using the phone’s gallery app, or something like Google Photos? Whether or not images are stored in the cloud seems to be a big issue when sharing to iNat.
I have had this as well. Google pixel 6, sharing to inat through camera app. Happens infrequently as barbetsmith pointed out, but still much quicker workflow than trying to add a new observation through the inat app, which invariably crashes after every move.
I’ve experienced this exact issue as well. Google Pixel 8a, iNat version 1.38.2.
I upload from my phone’s gallery, not from the cloud.
The issue hasn’t been super common, but I’ve experienced many times. As far as I can tell, it happens either when the iNat app is also open, or possibly the first time I share images to iNat from my phone after having closed the iNat app.
I’m able to cancel out of that particular submission and then redo it exactly the same way immediately after, and it works 100% of the time this way.
I think you are describing the same issue I have but maybe not.
When uploading more than one image on Android the first image often ‘breaks’. I noticed it happening when my phone may not be done processing the editing (crop/rotate) before uploading the file. Reuploading fixes it, but yeah, I have this every day.
This has been like this ever since though.
Xiaomi Readmi Note 12 (or something like this)
android 14UP1A.231005.007
App version:1.38.2(646)
Uploaded from Galery via share.
And glad I’m not crazy, haha! Maybe “a third of the time” is just how it feels and a bit of an overestimate, but I would say it’s been at least 10% of the time for me, and about ~25-50% of the time it takes multiple attempts after that. Still TBD whether reinstalling improved this or not.
I use Google Photos, so maybe trying that is a feasible workaround in the meantime (especially for those using Pixels who already have a Google account).