Android app stops saving IDs when identifying in "Explore"

Bug Reports
1

Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can.

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Android

App version number: 1.28.20 (573)

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

Step 1: Go into Explore.

Step 2: Search for Flies in North America. (Not sure whether the size of the location or size of the taxon makes a difference).

Step 3: Click on an observation.

Step 4: Press Suggest ID. Type in a taxon, select it, then press the check button.

Step 5: Press the back button to return to the Explore screen. (this bug may or may not be related to me going back before the observation has updated to show my new ID)

Step 6: Repeat steps 3-5 several times. (not sure exactly how many, may need to be be 20 or more)

Step 7: The first glitch that I notice is that clicking on the check mark brings me to the “Species Search” screen again instead of back to the observation. Pressing the back button on my phone brings me back to the “Add identification,” at which point the check mark button works again. This may or may not successfully add the identification. The “Species Search” glitch continues until I restart the app.

Step 8: Within the next few observations, the “Add identification” screen stops working. Clicking the check mark button (the second time) brings me back to the observation, but my ID does not save. At this point, I can’t add any more ID’s to this or any other observation until I restart the app.

1 Like
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I also get this bug ! The number of id needed to trigger the glitch seems quite random too, and it happens on several taxon/ location sizes.

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Yes, this happens to me too. I think it’s a little inconsistent in how often it glitches, but generally when I’m adding a lot of IDs and moving fast.

2 Likes
4

probably the best thing you all can do is to capture the logs from Android for the day as soon as you encounter the issue, and send these to the iNat staff.

if i had to guess, it sounds like you might be moving fast enough to encounter API rate limits, and the app may not be handling situations where the API request fails for whatever reason.

2 Likes
5

It happens to me as well. As already mentioned, especially when I am adding IDs in relatively rapid succession

6

Android

1.29.3 (577)

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/156168714

Instead of pictures i made a screen record of the problem.
https://youtu.be/oBDDFlCHEVc

Description of problem

A lot of times when I try to give an ID to a misidentified observation, it doesent save it and jumping back to the taxon-choosing page as you can see in the video.
The problem doesnt occures always and i cant tell why.

Thank you!

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seems like the same issue described previously in: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/android-app-stops-saving-ids-when-identifying-in-explore/42992

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@davidhorvth Thanks for posting the video! Should be helpful. I’ve moved this to the existing bug report for what seems to be the same issue.

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This happens to me when my Android oS phone runs out of memory. I demoed to iNat IT person during interview about IDing. He said it was related to photo handling.

Things that fix it right away:
Go to Settings, Battery and Device Care, click Optimize Now, and done.
Click on memory button, and Clean Now. When done, hit back arrow twice, then choose Apps.
Choose the inat app, then Storage, then Clear Cache. Close out and return to iNat.

When you return to iNat, there may be a dalay in screen refresh (temporary blank screen), or you may get thrown back to “My Observations” and need to reenter search terms.

On average i do this every 10 minutes.

You can also put Optimize button on desktop, but it doesn’t always prevent you from having to go into settings.

To prevent, I can look at smaller groups of observations (e.g. limit geographically, or filter by month). I can also ask iNat app, i think, to resort the observations.

Eventually the fix stops working, and instead of clearing cache I’ll have to clear data from iNat. The cost isn’t high…the only setting i have to reenter is turning off automatic upload.

Patti

2 Likes
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The link you provided points back to this thread?

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Same bug here, @peakyaytea has a semi-workaround below which I think I started using since I found it awhile back–it’s hit or miss, which is a real shame since mobile ID is much easier than desktop (at least on my computer and smartphone setup).