Android app feature requests request

Android users, what should we do next? We’ve been working on stability fixes and bugs for months, so it’s time to turn out eyes toward new features (also known as more stability problems and bugs). I’m going to throw a few in the Feature Requests category with the android-app tag and see how they do, but I’m inviting you to do the same, specifically for the Android app.

Here are some ideas that would not be helpful to suggest (and reasons why):

  • offline vision suggestions (we’re working on it and it’s tricky)
  • anything platform-level functionality the website can’t do, e.g. video recording (really looking for ideas the app could do with little to no changes on the server)
  • anything related to taxon changes, flags, or other curator concerns (this stuff will probably always live exclusively on the website)
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Thank for that LOL :joy:

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Having a dedicated Identify tab would be really nice.

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yeah i would love to see more functionality for adding IDs to other people’s observations and reviewing notifications (the iphone notifications method doesn’t really work, since it doesnt show them all among other things) but maybe that is too broad.

I also find that the GPS is slower to hone in and a bit less accurate on my samsung work phone versus my iPhone personal phone. Not sure if iNat can do anything to improve that or if it’s just a limitation of the phone or platform, though.

I don’t know if this is intended behaviour (so I won’t put it in the bug reports, but will file it here=, but when viewing observations on the Android App, when your scroll down to the bottom of the screen on the observation, it only appears to recognize old style projects.

For instance on my mobile version, this record https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/20950770

indicates it is in 2 projects. When viewed on the website, it lists 9. I believe the remaining 7 are collection projects.

While I am an infrequent user of the app, it would be nice if the information displayed was consistent.

Notifications on the app are handled differently from on the website. Some of the difference are nice – you can see what the ID someone suggested was, or a snippet of a comment. But the notifications in the app don’t include mentions. Would it be possible to build that functionality into the app?

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Specifically, what features in Identify are you missing in the Android app? You can already view observations by other people that are “Needs ID” in the Explore section. If we added a “Reviewed” filter you’d have the basic content you see in Identify. We could add more options to the species suggestions, e.g. taxa from nearby obs and RG obs. Personally, though, if I’m seriously identifying I need a larger screen than my phone, and if I’m not-so-seriously doing it, I’m generally not so invested that I want all those extra options.

That’s a big one, but I think that goes in the platform-level fix category. Notifications need help across iNat.

Nope, not much we can do about that. We use the coordinates the operating system gives us, and we ask it for the most accurate coordinates it can provide.

Not intended, just overlooked. Will fix.

If we did this, we’d either have to only show mentions in observations, comments on observations, and identifications, or show you the website in a browser for mentions on other kinds of content (journal posts, comments on posts, taxon changes, flags, etc). Preference?

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Here’s my feature request related to the ‘identify’ tab and the app:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/expanded-id-help-functionality-in-app/395
though it only has three votes so maybe it isn’t high priority to people.

I think the voting system still is confusing people or hasn’t settled out yet though.

Broadly i think being able to do ID help in the app would be really nice, but Ken-Ichi is also correct that the smaller screen (and also the harder typing and such) would make it always not as good as doing so on the website

Hm, it has to be either/or? Can you bring in the obs/ids mentions and also link to the website for other content mentions?

Doesn’t have to be either or, I’m just pointing out that the app can’t show you everything that might contain a mention, so either we don’t show you notifications about mentions on those kinds of content (journal posts, taxon changes, etc), or we do show them but tapping on them takes you out of the app and into a web browser.

This is a random suggestion(no pun intended), but could there be a random observations option on the app? Sometimes it’s good to just look at old observations in an area to see if there’s any I could ID.

Feel free to make a feature request. We could support something like the sort by random option on https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify

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Yeah, I just realized that this was a call for specific features, haha! When I have a moment later on, I will definitely do that.

I don’t use the app, but this issue was just discovered - a href tags don’t show text in blue (a link). I don’t know if this is a bug or an overlook, or something specific to a user who’s turned something off, or what, so I’m not sure where to log this. See https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/22562724#activity_comment_2763768 .