iNaturalist Updates for August 2023

[tiwane]

Here’s a list of iNat updates for August 2023. Thank, forum_moderators, for helping track these!

General

• Hiding content functionality added
• New Computer Vision Model released
• Search by orcid added
• Continued work on new mobile app - in pre-Alpha testing with staff
• Continued work on API v2. Curators can test it and provide feedback, see this thread.
• Many additional translations throughout the websites and apps - you can help.

Website

• Taxon Page now displays only the month and year for obscured or private “Latest Observation”
• Fixed a small bug in Identify, where selecting an ID from Suggestions and then quickly going to the next observation resulted in the next observation’s map not loading.
• The upload page will now retry uploading observations if there’s a local error.

Android

View all release notes

• No new public release, but bug fixes have been released in beta

iOS

• Several bug fixes, including a crash related to deleting or editing images in an observation and issues with Chinese language display.

Seek

• Released August challenge
• Updated Seek camera - it should be more responsive and be able to take advantage of multi-lens cameras.

iNat Blog

• August 1st: In Iraq, a Medical Student Finds the First Rhynchocorys odontophylla Plant Posted to iNat! - Observation of the Week, 8/1/23
• August 15th: A Striking, Uncommonly Seen Bird in Côte d’Ivoire
• August 22nd: Are Those Wasps…or Moths?
• August 23rd: A new Computer Vision Model (v2.6) including 1,399 new taxa
• August 29th: An Interest in Geckos During Lockdown Leads to Documenting Introduced Populations on iNat!
• September 1st: Identifier Profile: Gallformers (sneaking this in for the August updates post )

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

[kildor]

@tiwane

Continued work on new mobile app - in pre-Alpha testing with staff

I don’t know if it is right place to ask, but anyway. Will it be possible to download light version of the app, without seek model of CV? I’ve tried it and find it completely unusable without geographycal data which is not included to the app. May be it is good in North America, but not in Eurasia.
Also the package size bloated from 50 to 350+ MB, which is big enough for unused functionality (because of the first point and because it is much faster to make images on phone, next upload them to PC, edit and upload via web uploader).

[tiwane]

@kildor

I don’t know if it is right place to ask, but anyway. Will it be possible to download light version of the app, without seek model of CV?

Seek’s model is not in the standard iNaturalist app, it’s only in Seek. Which app are you using?

[kildor]

@tiwane

Which app are you using?

I have installed new ReactNative app to look into it. v0.8.1+50 had in changelog Basic AR camera (just names, using Seek model). Now it contains Using 2.4 model from May 2023.

[tiwane]

There’s not really anything I can say about that app at the moment, details-wise. There’s still a lot of work to do and many decisions to be made and I don’t want to say anything prematurely.

[kildor]

Sure, I understand. At least I tell you my opinion as user so you know it :-)

[redpandacat]

@tiwane

Fixed a small bug in Identify, where selecting an ID from Suggestions and then quickly going to the next observation resulted in the next observation’s map not loading.

Thank you. Thought it was just my internet.