Cannot upload any photos... on my personal phones

Bug Reports
1

Platform: iNat Next

App version number, if a mobile app issue: 1.0.21

Browser, if a website issue: NA

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

Screenshots of what you are seeing:

IMG_0121
IMG_01211206Ă—2622 813 KB

IMG_0124
IMG_01241206Ă—2622 59.3 KB

Description of problem: When I try to upload from either my new iPhone 17 or my old iPhone SE2, I can select photos but when I confirm my selections the loading screen pops up briefly, and then it redirects me to the main page of my observations. The photos included show the first two steps before it spits me back at the main page of the app. It never displays the edit observation/identification page for pre-upload.

Both phones are on iOS 26.5.

The WEIRDEST thing is that my corporate phone, an iPhone SE on the same iOS with the same version of the iNat Next app can upload photos just fine, with no issues at all. This issue is really frustrating and bizarre- I’d really rather not use a phone that doesn’t technically belong to me for all of my mobile uploading.

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

2

I’m sorry this is happening. A few questions:

  • do you use iCloud Photo as a backup?
  • do you have a solid internet connection when you’re doing this?
  • what happens if you go to your Photos app, select a photo or two, then share it to iNaturalist. Does that work?
3

Hey, thank you for your response. Yes, I use iCloud as a backup for photos. I’ve been having this issue on my personal phones for about a month and using my corporate phone as a crutch, and uploading has had the same issue regardless of wifi/cellular. There’s not really any load time, it just kind of instantly cancels out the uploaded photos and sends it back to the main observation page.

I tried sharing directly to iNaturalist from my photo library, and it works! I had looked for this feature in the past (maybe it’s new?) but it’s there now!

4

I just updated my device to iOS 26.5 and am still not able to replicate the issue. Can you please try to re-create the issue one more time and, if it persists, send us a log file from the app? That might provide some insight into what’s happening in the code.

To send a log file:

  1. Go to the About screen in the app and tap on the version number a few times until you see a pink “Turn off Debug Mode” button. That means you’ve now turned on Debug mode.

  2. In the side menu, tap on Debug

  3. Tap on the “Email Debug Logs” button at the top of the Debug page

  4. Email the log file

  5. Go back to the About screen and turn off Debug mode

It’s been there in the new app since the beginning, but it’s not something we’ve really promoted or publicized.