Same problem though… the app would represent a smaller group of identifiers, so really is the wrong direction to be going in if you want more attention on your observation.
Actually, it is kind of fun, using the app. Sometimes I just want to see what others upload but I´d rather be on the couch swiping on my mobile phone than be at the laptop. So, when I could select a taxon or this “please identify” group, I think identification would be more fun!
Is this still going on? As someone who does way more identifying than observing, I find the lack of ID interface on the official iNat app to be its biggest flaw.
yeah if you send your email address in a private message to @jtklein he can invite you to download the app. At this point it’s just broad IDs of plant, animal, or fungus to Unknown obs though, not a full fledged ID app.
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Yes, I was about to ask why don’t we have an app that could ID the pictures. Please, send me the beta test. I have TestFlight on my iPhone already.
Thank you
Hej Diogo,
sorry about the delay, I have been much busy in other projects. I have updated the identification app yesterday and made it available again. Please send me an email address of yours so that I can add you to the testers list.
Any feedback towards the app you can leave in the original forum post here.
All the best,
Johannes
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I have just been testing it today and so far so good, thanks! I am glad to be able to narrow down to say, single-photo obs so that after I do some of those I can see an enriched pool of multiphoto obs when I go back to the web.
I see that any description is shown, which is handy. How are observations with Placeholder values handled? I think those obs may be skipped, but I want to be sure before I mess too many of those up.
Edit: After some more cautious testing, it looks like placeholder-bearing records are skipped. This is great- it means the web-based pool will become enriched in those too, and I was looking for a way to do that since they can’t be pulled up as a set.
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I would like to request the ability to save my settings, e.g. North America with custom swipe directions. Right now I have to set them again each session.
As I’ve started using this, my technique is to coarsely id the ones I know I can go finer with. After doing that for a bit, I pull up this view on desktop:
This view pulls up all the ones I just id’d to go back over for both refinement and checking. The checking step is necessary for me because besides catching my inevitable mistakes, I like to zoom in on many things to doublecheck for birds in trees etc. Even with my extra step that lengthens the id process, I feel the overall process is more efficient for me than without using the app.
An in-app zoom function (pinch-expand?) would be handy if doable.
If I understand correctly, swiping down does NOT mark as reviewed – and you can save the “skipped” observations and check them later. Ive never done this though.
there is an option in the menu for “skip and Mark reviewed”.
One issue I am running into while using the app is encountering the non-Life/Unknown entries that still show up with them, like Viruses and Bacteria. They are not labeled as such directly in the app, so it is hard to know which ones are in that set while iding.
In case it could help a future improvement to the app, here is a thread about the issue, where there is a link to the web url workaround:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/ided-species-turns-up-in-identify-with-unknown-filter/5188
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Thanks for this suggestion, I have added this to the latest version.
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Thank you for testing the app so thoroughly! I have included your query syntax with excluded_taxon_id to the latest version of the app. Now there should be no more bacteria and viruses in the mix. Please, if you can, continue testing and let me know if there are no more bacteria. And let me know anything else you find.
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The change works great, thanks so much!
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I have suddenly found a huge benefit to this tool: Guess what, there was also a Malaysian Bioblitz the year before Penang 2019, and in my normal unknowns workflow I’ve finally run into it. This chunk of thousands of unlabeled records per user would have made me screen Malaysia out for a while. Now it’s like, “hey, bring it on!”
I had a spell of insomnia and running through a bunch of nice pictures of mostly plants was the perfect calm thing to do until ready for bed again. Thanks!
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I can second that, this app is perfect for me when I’m struggling with anxiety and just need something calm and easy to do for a while without feeling I’m doing nothing.
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i finally got a phone new enough to run this. The idea is excellent, but I’m a little horrified at the thought of creating a bunch of IDs that say “animal” when I really doubt there’s anyone out there who sorts observations using that kingdom–there are EIGHT iconic taxa in it. If I could change “animal” to either “bird” or “insect” that would probably cover a large chunk of photos that come up.
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hey, it’s better than Unknown.
also, there are people who ID stuff I’ve left at Kingdom Animalia. @brianwhite in particular adds finer IDs to many of them.
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To handle that effect I use this url to follow up https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?reviewed=true&order_by=updated_at&lrank=kingdom&per_page=100 and start by filtering for Animalia, refine those, then do Fungi, refine those if possible. They are likely to be smaller, handle-able sets to go back through compared to Plantae.
Then I can filter for Plantae and just skim through quickly looking for the ants or birds or mushrooms I might have missed in the foliage. In my region I might be able to go to species on some but out of my region I will leave them as Plantae (for now).
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