Goal: Easily check the exact time a photo was taken directly from the thumbnail view in the Identify view on Desktop (Chrome etc)
Proposal: When hovering the mouse over a photo thumbnail in the Identify view, display a tooltip with the photo’s timestamp (hour/minute/second from EXIF data). See attached screenshot.
Use Case / Value: When reviewing multiple photos within an observation—especially for fast-moving organisms (such as flying insects or birds)—it is critical to verify whether sequential photos belong to the same individual/event. Having quick access to the timestamp via hover would speed up validation, help detect errors, and confirm observation authenticity without needing to open each photo or observation in full view.
It might be quite a while before this is added to the standard iNat functionality, but there is already a browser extension that will do this for you:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lnlcflxs-firefox-chrome-browser-extension/76846/15
In the Identify view, this shows the time-offset of each photo compared to the time/date field on the observation itself. It’s a great easy way to:
- Determine the time sequence of photos in the observation
- Confirm “extra” photos that appear to have been included by accident
- Find observations with fake date stamps submitted by competitive and duress users (City Nature Challenge, student assignments, etc.)
Oh I have to fix the placement!
I don’t actually use this feature inside the ID tab so I did not see when it broke ^^’
EDIT: First thought it’s some weird interaction with iNat Enhancement Suite.
That’s quite plausible. FWIW, I’m using the following iNat extensions:
- LnLcFlx’ iNaturalist Tweaks 0.0.17
- iNaturalist Enhancement Suite 1.2.0
- iNaturalist Metadata Tool 3.4.0
Thanks for that information. I’m glad I’m not the only one who needs such data. I’ll try it out in the coming days. I use the mentioned iNaturalist Enhancement Suite as an extension.
