Allow offline access to observation data and map

[dep]

I must be awful at searching, because I can’t believe nobody has asked for this before:

I like to go back to an area and see how different individual organisms change during the year. Sometimes I just want to check on an ID, because at the time I first observed the organism, the identifying characteristics were not visible. Of course, my memory can’t possibly handle the number of organisms nor the exact locations where I found them, so I feel like I always forget about 80% of what I wanted to check up on. It would therefore be unbelievably useful if the app had a map with our own observation data, preferably with offline access to names and mapped locations. Photos would of course require way too much memory. I guess one potential solution would be if we could select a specific area to save, and it would only save small/thumbnail images… but even just having the names and locations on a map would be incredibly useful, and that’s all I’m really asking for.

I’m aware that we could just go to the site on the phone and use that, but 1) that sort of defeats the purpose of having a separate app 2) that still requires internet, which is often not available and/or uses data. 3) it’s not as user friendly and requires a lot more time, if it’s even usable at all. Personally I can’t really click on pins when using my phone because they’re just too small and don’t respond, so that doesn’t work for me.

[pisum]

i’m guessing what you’re asking for in terms of providing offline map data + mappable observations in an app would be super complex from a technical perspective. i suspect the benefit likely would not justify the cost to do this.

i’m not sure which app you’re talking about, but in the Android app, there maps available in the Explore screen (as long as you have a data connection):

you may want to read this other thread, too: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/locally-store-map-tiles/3457. it’s sort of in limbo and it doesn’t directly discuss what you’re talking about, but it might give you a sense of what others have said about offline mapping in general. for example:

@kueda

digression into novel functionality like a map view of My Observations

[markg729]

I had a similar request I’ll add here:

Implement offline search of own observations by arbitrary taxa in mobile app

I frequently use the mobile app as my personal herbaria, and suspect others do too, and often don’t have phone service to access the web interface. I’d love a feature where I can search my own observations for all records that match a particular taxa (e.g. poaceae) offline.

I suspect this would require major development work but wanted to put it out there anyway.

I think this functionality would only really work well if there were also a feature where I can control how many observations the app caches locally. I’m not sure how to state this in light of the ‘one feature request per post’ rule.

[charlie]

I do wish at least the un-uploaded pins would display on the map as it makes it really useful in terms of keeping track of where i have been since the last upload, etc. This is how the app used to work um, a decade ago (wow i am old and so is iNat :) ) but it hasn’t worked that way for a while (overall the app is MUCH improved but i do miss that one feature).
On the other hand i am now able to track my location in Garmin watch, avenza, etc etc so it’s become less important to me

[earthknight]

I requested something like this as a feature back in January 2020

• https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/show-my-past-observation-pins-when-marking-new-observations-on-map/9503/16

The last comment was the following:

@tiwane

We’ve made an issue for this functionality here: https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/2892

[ericdong886]

Hi all,

I sort of implemented this feature in my poll request: https://github.com/inaturalist/iNaturalistReactNative/pull/3608

I hope that iNat staff members can review these changes and merge my pull request as I think this would be a great addition!

Let me show you how it works:

First, select the desired species as normal. Then, click the download button next to the layers button on the left and wait for it to finish

Then click the offline maps icon on the bottom right next to binoculars icon to view your downloaded observations.

Then select the offline map that you would like to view. It will open and load in the observations. There are two view modes, the first one is static mode, which essentially is a captured screenshot with observations and your live location overlayed on top. There is also a satellite mode screenshot which you can choose to view by pressing the layers button on the bottom left.

The other mode is live mode, which overlays the observations on top of Apple Maps (for iOS). The catch is that you’d have to pre-download the offline map for the region in Apple Maps. Then, you just press the “Live” button on the bottom right to switch to live mode. This allows more native feel, almost identical to the regular iNaturalist experience.

Finally, since it is not possible to download all the images for each observation, we save the bare minimum amount of information for each observation. By tapping each pin, you may view this information.

My original rejected feature request:

Whether it’s for foraging or for finding new species, the ability to save observations to reference while off the grid is extremely powerful. Imagine having the ability to download all the observations along a hiking trail that’s completely off the grid!

Feature request details:

• a “capture” or “save” button that saves all the observations (of the selected species) in the mapped area.

• a “view” button that allows the user to select through a list of downloaded offline mapped regions.

  • once selected, the user is able to view the observations overlayed with the following two options

    • a screenshot of the original mapped area (save a GPS coordinate when we save the offline map so we can overlay the observations on the screenshot)

    • system default map. In the case of iOS, Apple Maps now supports offline maps and iNat should be able to request for the mapped area

I was able to vibe code these features and get them sort of working on iOS. Posting here to see what others think.