Android app double posting

Awesome, we got them. Thanks @carancho!

I often make pictures and at the end of the day at home I import them into the app. When I have added some pics I upload them at once.

Both observations with an android app, but I do not know the version…
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/37810146
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/37810143

I am also having this issue frequently while on fast WiFi and trying to add observations from existing photos in my phone’s media gallery. An observation gets stuck on “waiting to upload”. The only way to proceed is to close the app and reopen. At that point the observation splits into two, one with no photo. If I delete either observation and then reopen the app a third time, they are both gone. It’s happening frequently enough to make the app unusable. Samsung Galaxy s10e, Android 10, iNat 1.17.9 (398). I am also having pinned locations not show up in the pinned locations list. Between these two bugs, I am getting incredibly frustrated with trying to add observations.

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I’m sorry to hear that @mjsarver. Can you please send us log files from the app the next time you experience this, as soon as possible? This will help us understand what might be going wrong here. And please don’t edit the observations it creates, so we can take a look at them.

To send log files, go to the Settings tab in the app and tap three times on the version number. You will then have the option to email the log files to us.

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One more case of this bug. I tried to use Inat App for the first time(I usually shot on camera and upload photos throught the web interface) and got this error(duplicate observation) on just second upload:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/38843090
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/38842926

Interesting, that in Inat App I see only one, combined observation.
INat app version 1.17.9 (398). Android 10.0.0.179(C185E3R3P3)

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Please send us log files from the app if you can, that’s really the only way we can see what the app is doing and then work on a fix.

To send log files, go to the Settings tab in the app and tap three times on the version number. You will then have the option to email the log files to us.

I am having this issue with the Android app. When I go on my computer I realise I have two observations created, one with the photograph without the date, gps coordinates etc. and another with a date etc. and no photograph. I have had to fix up several observations when I go on my computer. I did report the issue to the android app developer a few weeks ago. Hoping there will be a fix in a future release of the app.

I reported the same issue as swainsona1 described a good while ago since several of my friends seem to frequently have the issue. Often a observation will be split into two. One with a photo. The other with location but without a photo. I worked with the support people, but last I remember they were unable to reproduce it. I was going to try and get logs from my friend’s phones next time it happend and forgot about it. As far as remember, it seemed more likely to happen when the phone’s data connection was weak. Maybe turn off Automatic Upload (Auto Sync) and only upload when on a reliable network connection. I don’t use the app much myself so I haven’t run into the problem often.

Check recent bug reports, that happens when you upload 2 and more observations at the same time, when you upload 1 and wait till it’s fully uploaded this bug doesn’t happen.

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I’ve had that too, but not recently. When it happened for me I could see both observations on my phone so it was obvious there was a problem if I looked. The problem occurred for me when I switched to another app between creating the observation & uploading it (e.g. to search for info about the suggested species). I think that has been resolved.

I’ve seen a number of observations by other people like this (when looking on the website) and my wife had one do this too recently. Her observation had inconsistent display between her phone and the website.

Is this with settings to upload the observations straight away? I’ve now got my set to upload only when I tell it too and that seems ok with uploading multiple observations and even creating new observations while the upload is happening.

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Yes, that’s with automatic upload.

FYI, still seeing this affecting users with recent observations (leaving userID visible, because the user did nothing wrong):

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Looks like all the doubles were posted last year. I haven’t heard of it happening recently.

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Platform: Android

App version number: 1.15.2

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/60562503
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/60567728

Description of problem:

Step 1: Sometimes when I use the mobile app, it will create a blank observation as linked in the two observations above. I see no reason to delete the observations so the next time I iNat something with my phone, I will edit the blank observation and add the photos, location and time.

Step 2: The first linked observation should be a moth and the second a deer. I took a third observation today on a fresh observation but since the previous two observations won’t sync to the internet, that one won’t either.

Step 3: I have tried refreshing the page, closing the app and even restarted my phone but nothing is letting it sync to iNat. The green bar will say “preparing to sync” but it will disappear and do nothing. So on my phone, the three observations are “waiting to upload…” and the bar is green. On my computer, these observations are no photo, no location, no date, no id casual sightings.

Do you have the same issue when you update to a newer version of the app? I think this might have been resolved in an update.

Worked.

Update: Never mind, I just went on the website and the observations have been updated to species identification but the photos are not attached.

Unfortunately I don’t think any bug fixes for this would fix old observations, just new ones - if you make a new observation, does it sync, along with the photo, date, and ID attached?

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Might be a new bug but I tried it out by adding four new observations and the app made an additional four blank ones. So even though I only made four observations, on the website I have eight new ones but only four are needs ids.

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Ok, shoot. But thank you for trying. I’ll merge your comments to this existing open bug report I just found so that the discussion is focused in one place.

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