iNaturalist Updates for April and May 2024

[tiwane]

Sorry for skipping last month, here’s a list of iNat updates for April and May 2024. Thanks for helping to track these, forum moderators!

General

• Released a two new Computer Vision Models! (v2.12) with 1,983 new taxa, and (v2.13) with 1,656 new taxa
• iNaturalist welcomed three new staff members!
• Completed Observation Accuracy Experiment (0.4)
  
• Replaced Whitney font with Lato font on the website, Android app, and Seek by iNaturalist
• Continued work on new mobile app - in Beta testing with staff and a group of invite-only users
• Continued work on API v2 - curators can test it and provide feedback, see this topic
• Many additional translations throughout the websites and apps - you can help

Website

• Technical updates related to place geometry validation, taxon change processing, email validation, and users indexing
• Various bug fixes and minor changes

Android

View all release notes

• Released version 1.30.15 (608), which replaced the Whitney font and incorporated new translations

iOS

• Released version 3.3.3, which fixed a bug when formatting images for computer vision.

Seek

• Released April challenge
• Released May challenge
• Removed Whitney font

iNat Blog

• April 3rd: 3,000,000 Observers!
• April 4th: New Computer Vision Model (v2.12) with 1,983 new taxa
• May 2nd: iNaturalist April News Highlights
• May 7th: Observation Accuracy Experiment v0.4 is Underway
• May 9th: Welcome, Michelle, Thea, and Jane!
• May 16th: New Computer Vision Model (v2.13) with 1,656 new taxa
• May 21st: A Showy Hedgenettle - Observation of the Week, 5/21/24
• May 31st: iNaturalist May News Highlights

For even more bug fixes and updates, check out iNaturalist on github and see previous monthly updates.

[mbwildlife]

Excited to see progress on the new app!

[kildor]

@tiwane

Continued work on new mobile app - in Beta testing with staff and a group of invite-only users

Is it ok to use the new app by downloading apk from github and manually install it?)
I try to use it for some month and last week I use it actively in my trip. I’ve failed to create new observation, but it was nice to have offline AI suggetions and even more nice to explore observations around my location. Much better than native or web ones.

[tiwane]

Yes, we can’t stop you from downloading it.

[jeanphilippeb]

Welcome to Senna weddelliana in the CV model!

Thanks to alfredo_f_fuentes, who made the first identifications 3 months ago, the identification of this species was “unlocked”. Using a “similar observation set” field that grouped most observations, it was then possible to ID them all in a very short time, allowing this species to be selected for the CV model.

[optilete]

@kildor Do you recommend to try it?

[kildor]

And what’s about submitting a bug reports?

@optilete

Do you recommend to try it?

Well, I think yes. At least discovery is made much better than in current android app. Also it doesn’t hang on start. There are many missed parts currently, but also many implemented features.

[tiwane]

At this point we’re focusing on iOS development, so I wouldn’t recommend submitting bug reports at this time if you’re an Android user.

[kildor]

Got it. Will wait till Android turn.
Good luck in development.