I use Seek on iPhone all the time to quickly ID and upload most species. And even if I already know the species, scanning them with Seek was an enormous time saver. Assuming Seek’s ID is correct and I agreed with it, I used to automatically post those IDs from WITHIN Seek directly to my iNaturalist account, sometimes only having to select “obscure” option for rare species. That worked until this Winter. I have not been able to get it working again, the button to post from iNaturalist is now missing dang it! How do I get this functionality back?
This new bug is a HUGE time waster and pain. “Seek” was great cuz 1) I didn’t have to waste time by opening 2 apps instead of just 1; and 2) having to hand type long ID names on small phone screen requiring pulling out a second set of glasses (readers) out of my pocket and case just to type into iNaturalist. I can read in Seek app, but I cannot see well enough to type into iNaturalist. I only walk/hike wearing distance glasses so I don’t take a spill on rough terrain, but always wear binoculars around my neck for distant IDs. Wearing readers is just too much gear dangling around.
Staff has now integrated the Seek-like camera access into the latest native iNaturalist release (1.0.23). In this version of the “New” iNat app, the “+” button for adding observations brings up a number of options including “ID in Camera” with the ability to capture a photo from that view as well (and add additional images, etc.).
It is my understanding that the iNat app takes full advantage of the latest Computer Vision training while the Seek app may employ an older less-well trained version–someone can correct me if I am misstating that–so you’re likely to get much better ID suggestions from the new iNat app.
So I would encourage you to migrate your efforts to the new iNaturalist app and continue posting great observations!
Both apps use the same on-device model. iNat will, however, query the latest full model on our servers if it has an internet connection, after you take the photo.
