iNaturalist Next App Soft Launch for iPhones

News and Updates
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Today marks the soft launch, for iPhones running iOS 14 or above, of iNaturalist’s new rewritten and redesigned mobile app, which we’re currently calling iNaturalist Next. It’s available in the Apple App Store (open that link on your iPhone). It may not be immediately available in App Store search results.

By “soft launch” we mean that iNaturalist Next is at a stage where we’re comfortable releasing it publicly, but mostly as a way to gather feedback from a wider audience than we can with a beta release, and that it’s not ready for prime time yet. We won’t be promoting it or announcing it outside of this forum post, although the app will be available in the App Store to anyone who wants to download it to their iPhone. Think of it as analogous to a restaurant’s soft launch: we’re open for customers but we’re still tweaking our dishes and working out the kinks before a grand opening. We’re not promising everything is up to snuff yet.

The current standard iNaturalist app will still be available, so if you’re not comfortable trying out or using iNaturalist Next, please continue using the current iNaturalist app. And even if you do want to try out iNaturalist Next, we recommend keeping the current app on your device as a backup.

Differences from the current app

Below is a non-exhaustive list of changes you’ll find in iNaturalist Next at today’s soft launch, when compared to the current iNaturalist app for iPhones. We plan to add more functionality and of course fix bugs after today.

  • completely redesigned interface
  • in-camera ID suggestions (similar to Seek by iNaturalist)
  • offline ID suggestions
  • multi-photo camera option (take multiple photos for a single observation before creating it)
  • bulk upload, group photos, and make multiple observations upon photo import
  • expanded Explore functionality
  • access to your complete Account Settings
  • functionality to withdraw your ID
  • functionality to search all of your observations
  • separate Save and Upload Now buttons
  • access to the Data Quality Assessment
  • no functionality to search for Projects or add/remove observations to or from Projects

How to provide feedback

In iNaturalist Next’s side menu you’ll see a Feedback option. Tap on that to write a message and send it to iNat’s developers and designer. This is the best way to provide constructive feedback directly to the iNat team. We’re reading every piece of feedback while it’s still reasonable for us to do so.

We’ve also opened up two new categories here on the forum: iNaturalist Next Bug Reports and iNaturalist Next Discussion. iNaturalist Next Bug Reports works just like the main Bug Reports category does. iNaturalist Next Discussion is a place for people to ask questions of each other or brainstorm ideas. Note that we will not be prioritizing Feature Requests for iNaturalist Next at this time, as we’re working on a list of features we want to have ready for “hard launch”.

Thank you for your patience with us as we work to improve the iNaturalist mobile app experience!

FAQs

Should I use iNaturalist Next?

If you have an iPhone running iOS 14 and above, you can download and use iNaturalist Next. However, keep in mind that it might be more buggy than the current app, and is missing some functionality such as anything to do with Projects. Note that it might not be possible to import photos if your device is running iOS 14.

Why is iNaturalist Next only available for iPhones? What about Android?

There are two main reasons we’re choosing to initially release iNaturalist Next for iPhones only: 1) it’s easier to fix basic bugs and work out issues when only dealing with one operating system. Once we feel the app is in a solid place for iOS, we can start branching out to Android devices and iPads. 2) Because the current iOS app lacks features that our current Android app has, we felt it would be better to bring some new features to the iOS platform.

I’m leading a class or event - which version of iNaturalist should I have participants use?

If they have an iPhone we recommend having they use the standard iNaturalist app. It should be more stable and it has functionality for Projects, which iNaturalist Next lacks at soft launch.

When will the “hard launch” be?

We can’t provide an exact date, but we plan on releasing it in 2025.

When will iNaturalist Next be open for translation?

At soft launch, iNaturalist next will only be available in English. Translation is a priority for hard launch, so we will likely open it for translation before then. Learn more about translating iNaturalist’s website and apps here.

Are there help documents available for iNaturalist Next?

Yes, see this page on the iNaturalist Help site.

I like the current app. Will it eventually go away?

Yes, we plan to remove the current iOS and Android apps from the App Store and Google Play Store when iNaturalist Next is ready for wider launch. iNaturalist Next will then be known as just “iNaturalist” and the old apps will no longer be available.

Our primary goals in making a new app were to reduce confusion among iNat users between the existing iPhone and Android apps, and to avoid redundant engineering effort. Keeping them around indefinitely would work against those goals.

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Thank you, Tony. This has been a long awaited day, so congrats to the team for reaching this important milestone.

Is this functionality to be included in the hard launch in 2025?

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I couldn’t see it in search, but I went instead to the old app in the app store, clicked on Developer and that then showed the new app. I hope this tip helps anyone else who doesn’t see it yet.

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Thanks! I updated the original post here with instructions to open up the link on one’s iPhone, to try and make that more clear. Hopefully the app shows up in searches soon.

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Congratulations! This sounds like a great milestone in what seems like a well thought-out product launch plan.

Is there a way to sign up as a beta tester for the Android version?

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Congrats (and huge thanks) to the team who worked on this! I have told so many people about iNat over the years, with the caveat that the iOS app is… not great. I’m very glad I can leave that part out now! :-) And I can check my notifications in the app *edit: not quite. I can search for something in my own observations! I can use “Seek” without having to remember which page of apps it’s on! It’s glorious!

Is there any way to see any kind of current roadmap or currently-pipelined features, to avoid making redundant requests/feedback? Like I assume we will eventually be able to check/send/reply-to messages? That sort of thing.

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I have just downloaded and explored the new app (it’s shown up in my app store search), and I just had to say what a fantastic job everyone involved in its development has done. Almost every feature I’ve been missing is now there with lots of granular control, and the team has struck a great balance between presenting a great deal of information while keeping things visually clean.

Glad to hear the project function is being worked on. The only obvious thing missing is access to messages, but hopefully that will be implemented as a feature down the line.

Congratulations, and thanks again to the team. Looking forward to doing even more iNat-ing!

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This is great news!

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Great-looking app! Interface is much improved, although there are still some mysteries to explore. Thanks to the whole team!

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This is awesome news and I already love the new app! Thanks for adding all the new features I was hoping for! I have some minor suggestions for the UI (which I will post in the new category), but please take them as constructive criticism. Overall, I am super happy with it! Congratulations on a job well done!

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Some things I am appreciating already:

  • The overall look.
  • I think the grouping function for observations is going to be awesome when I have a lot to upload.
  • The website will likely remain the better place for identifying, but it’s nice to have an option on the phone. It took a little clicking around to figure it out, but that feels like a feature not a bug (if its too easy, people might add a lot of IDs without knowing the role of identifications on iNat).
  • The “Agree” button is present, but requires an extra click to expose. This seems like a nice compromise on requests to remove the button from a user’s own observations.

Congrats to the team for all their hard work.

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I’m excited to see iPhones get improved functionality. Yay!

But I’m not seeing any way to access messages in the new app? That seems like an unfortunate oversight-- once again Apple users won’t even know if somebody is trying to message them unless they make the jump to the website version, which many phone users never do.

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It’s now showing up in the suggestions below the search box after typing “iNat” so it must be proving popular!

Time to go and have a play, thanks for all the hard work.

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Awesome news! Huge thanks to the team for all their hard work on this – I’m so looking forward to trying this out.

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I really hope the changes when it gets to the Android app it results in adding cool features rather than removing stuff. I still remember and am still mad about when eBird took over from the Birdlog app and took away the best feature that we had on the Android version. It has been like 15 years and I’m still salty about it.

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As a person who has been using the old app for quite some time, especially with audio recordings and uploading straight from my photos app, this is going to take some time to get used to, but it is a welcome change! I haven’t used Seek and the AI camera is so new to me lol. Being able to access what is basically the website in pocket form is going to be fantastic for IDing on the bus and taking multiple photos is going to be a blessing. The old app really was quite clunky to use, and I have a backlog of pictures in my phone from literally a year back because the workflow using it was unideal. I feel like I’m going to be taking pictures of everything now, like when I first discovered the app, like a child on Christmas Day :)

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Thanks for the kind words!

At this point there isn’t a beta program for Android, but you can try out the apk and see if it works for you: https://github.com/inaturalist/iNaturalistReactNative iOS is the current priority, though.

At this point we’re mostly interested in feedback/bugs about the current release, like what’s confusing to you, are there too many icons, is it difficult to read, is there something about the current workflows that can be improved, etc. And then, feedback about what features you think would be best to add (eg messages, projects, etc). But those major things are on the horizon.

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I tried it today and here’s my impressions from one day:

-I like it better than the old app for sure. it seems smoother and the algorithm works better.

-I did not allow it to access my photo album, because i don’t want my iNat photos filling up my phone. I’d like to request an option to turn off saving the photos to the phone album, or else a ‘do not show this again’ option for the screen with the frog picture that asks for photo access. It comes up literally every time i take a photo.

-a minor thing, but when you use the in-app algorithm, the button to accept the algorithm ID during the virtual reality thing is way at the top, requiring a second hand to agree to it. Also after you agree to it it still makes you look at the other algorithm page. I’d prefer if it were near the bottom and went straight to the observation edit page after you clicked it.

-Is it possible to make it so we can swipe left and right through our observations, especially the un-uploaded ones, so we can easily review them before uploading?

Thank you!

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How exciting! I was just talking with a bunch of folk in conservation about how I was looking forward to the new iOS app whenever it would come out just last week. Installing this immediately - eager to help this app improve as time goes on.

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It’s great to see this finally get of the ground!

Then new app looks good so far, but there seems to be a big, important piece missing.

In the ‘explore’ option (the compass rose icon) and under your own observations there doesn’t seem to be any way to use a map view. It defaults to a grid (or list) of species.

Being able to look and select via the map, as well as limit the relevant observations to the screen map area, like the old app allows, is critical for finding specific observations or for making sure that the observations you’re looking at are actually limited to the relevant area rather than to the larger default ‘nearby’ region.

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