App version number, if a mobile app issue:iNat iphone 2022 SE app 1.0.25(220)
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Description of problem:
The iNat iphone 2022 SE app 1.0.25(220) is using 12GB. Took some time to realise what was happeing. I was in the mountains of Montenegro (Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro) and i liked the offline possibilities (and share possibilities) of the new app so i disabled communicaton with Airplane mode to prevent battery consumption by looking for connections which is not present.
Someties i am forced to log out but it seems that the solution for the Android is better.
I deleted my largest apps and "not used"but the inat app kept on going for asking for more space. Further uploing gave several timnes problems while another app frn another platform uploaded the photos smooth.
After deleting all my apps and data i login en logout and regained 10GB.
But the Android app has a nicer soluiton it seems
The old app stopped at 4GB.
I think this is not the way an app should work, using so much space. The Observation app uses much less space, storage, is much faster and as an extra does function much better with uploading. I have no problems with that observation app uploading while the iNat app stops and hesitateds in stead just uploading the observatons as fast as it can.
Due to bad coverage and saving battery i often was working in airplane mode. i had a local sim
I really liked the offline Ai/computer vision as at least i always got an answer
I’ve never had the app size approach anything like this in my usage. Did you have a bunch of unsynced observations due to not having a good internet connection? If so, how many?
If you’re referring to the cache deletion option on Android, that’s at the system level, it’s not part of the app.
Often i added 5-15 species and 5-20 photos per batch and than did another batch often uploading the photos inbetween.
As the photos were thumnails i also used the photo viewer and shared the 1(sometimes 2-3 photos) photo with the inat Next generation app and an observation app and than delte this photo.
This contuned for 5-35 observations/5-50 photos. Interconnection by mobile data was bad but wifi was rather good last five days (bit hard to say we stayed on 3 locations and sometimes i uploaded with mobiel data but often to far to much time by broken uploads to inaturalist. With observation i had no problems)
if i use the Samsug Android app i see the app doing al kind of file and cleaingup operations, so i do not know it is system level.
The old inat app on iOs did not use more than 4GB i thought.
On a regular basis the Inat app Next Generation was using often more than 8GB.
I did not have more than 30 fotos in queue ans uploading was to problemetic and it seems not smart to let the the queue become more than 30 observations. At night between 02:00 and 05:00 upload was sometimes spectacular fast.
I think the app thorows me out every week. First i was shocked but it seems the iphone kept my password so i was able to login in.
After deleting apps i logged out and in than the cache seemed to be cleared. but i think one should consider a solution which is using far less storage (till 2GB)
I regularly hold back about 100 to 300 observations from synchronization for a few reasons (eg connectivity or to avoid uploading too much on a weekend or in a short time span). I least once per week I usually to go down to zero.
What is this?
I should maximise the upload, in case your phone get lost or drops in the water, what off course never will happen to you… You expect to get less second ID’s?
In my area identifiers are overwhelmed with the observations of a weekend during the warmer seasons. I try to improve the chance of getting their attention. As far as it is not a matter of connectivity, my photos should be synchronizied with the cloud anyway.
I used to do that too. And I think this is about the minimum number of unsynced observations the app should be able to store, more would be better. Otherwise the app becomes really useless for excursions (yes there are many and large “no signal”-areas on this globe). The android app can store more than 100 observations (will give it a severe stutter uploading though).
I am using the iPhone app. As the above mentioned solution is from 2023 I would say it didn’t perfectly solve the issue. As far as I remember I deleted the app twice during the last nine months or so.
Edit: I just remembered that I did a few screenshots to see if deleting helped.
I deleted the app in the last December, March and May.
In March I took two screenshots. Store consumption went down from 42 GB to 8.
Edit 2
On May the fourth I had been 23 GB. I didn’t take a second screenshot at the time but now I am at 5.3 GB for iNat next. Maybe there had been more recent changes. BTW I never noticed something similar in iNat classic, which I never stopped using and never deleted. Classic consumes 262 MB(!). I had to scroll down to the bottom of the list to find it.
42GB ? I was wondering if the arcetecture should change. I would appreciate if the app just stores the data in a table of SQLLIte database in stead of using an api, that would reduce traffic, works prefect offline and uses a less storage. I only need the photos which are uploaded on that specifik appartus, device.
iNat Classic have been using 4GB last year, but not 12GB as iNat New Next Generation app-1-0-25- did.
The identification model of Merlin is about 500MB and of Inat Next/Seek also 500MB i think
But i think the whole caching is not very smart and intelligent and has al lot of redundancy.
But in other apps you can upload till 3000 observations without to much problems, it only lasts 14minutes before it finishes. And it does not take that much space.
I was wondering if the current model has advantages as it is rather slow and breaks rather frequently.
8GB is a lot. s is often just a few GB, 2GB (Store consumption went down from 42 GB to 8.)
Where are you getting these numbers from? I don’t know about Merlin, but a fresh install of iNaturalist, before I log in to my account, takes about 230 mb of storage. And that includes the in-app model for the camera.
“Leave” in this case means go to your device’s home screen, or go to another app. It does not mean deleting the app, logging out of the app, or quitting the app.
I didn’t. In an earlier conversation about energy consumption it was mentioned that the app might be not designed to be used in the way I do it. Deleting the app from time to time therefore seems to be good enough for me. I guess average users don’t run into that situation. I think the last time I deleted the app was in July. So I am doing this every two to three months. A bit weird but doable.
Are you starting in the Photos app and sharing to iNaturalist, or are you starting in the iNaturalist and then starting the import process from within iNaturalist?
If the former, we think we’ve found the bug. The app is not clearing the photos that are imported that specific way, as suspected. But it’s only happening with this observation creation workflow.
I always start with the photo app and share the photos with iNat. I regularly take a few ten or even hundred pictures and I later go through those to may be cut ot the relevant part or correct orientation. Most of my observations include more than one picture. I go through a few hundred pictures sharing them with iNat to create about up to three hundred observations and then I start the upload process to the web more or less in batches of up to sixty observations twice a day or so.
