App version number, if a mobile app issue: unknown, since I can’t check anything within the app, running iOS 18.6.1
Browser, if a website issue:
URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:
Screenshots of what you are seeing: app is frozen and has no ability to clear screen
Description of problem: Bug in the new iPhone app – I’ve force quit the app and restarted my phone, and the app is still not working. It’s frozen with this screen and can’t click anywhere or hold or change the screen in any way. I have an iPhone 16 pro running iOS 18.6.1. The only thing I haven’t tried is uninstalling and reinstalling the app, but I’ve been hoping the app would get an update so I don’t have to do that.
UPDATE: just out of curiosity I tried to click and hold for like 30 seconds, and then the normal menu around the action button came up. So there’s something wrong with the interface that froze up and required me to hold for so long.
I have to say, I’m really not a fan of the new app. I prefer the original app in most cases.
It’s a disappointment as I was really looking forward to the new app fixing some of the clunkiness of the original, as well as adding in some useful features, but it almost seems like the opposite happened…. greatly increased clunkiness, already existing features hidden in odd places, and previous features downgraded.
For me it’s extremely slow, especially when giving AI recommendations. And if I’m remote and my signal is pretty bad, the AI is usually extremely unpredictable, often giving very wrong recommendations, and I’m guessing it’s based on sending less data to their servers and just using on-app processing. I had to just turn off the automatic AI recommendation and just add an identification after uploading.
And an update on my frozen screen, I now can’t make an observation in the new app. I press, or press and hold, the camera icon and nothing happens. I just decided to uninstall and reinstall the app and it works normally now.
I can’t replicate the issue, but we also received a few emails about this. It’s difficult to know if it’s a UI issue (like are some people pressing and holding on the pop-up message and not the camera icon, and thus we need to make that more clear), or is it a technical issue. Sounds like it’s the latter, but I haven’t been able to replicate on my device.
I assume you had the app already installed for some time and the app was automatically updated over the weekend by the App Store? Or had had you recently installed the app?
If you have specific feedback with examples, please start a new topic, would be happy to check them out. We summarize user feedback every Monday.
I’m in the same situation as observer josh. At first the app froze and I could unfreeze it by restarting, but no longer. I can wait, restart, do all sorts of things but it remains as dead as a dodo. It will let me scroll down, but only a little. Very frustrating. I actually prefer the new app but am forced to go with the clunkier classic. This has been happening (and I keep hopefully trying) for the past 2 months. What a pity. Please help.
If you’re offline or have a weak or unstable signal, the app uses its offline model and not the full model on the iNat servers. It shouldn’t be too different either way, though, especially if you have a location when getting the ID.
which version do you have? are you using standard or default mode?
have you made any changes in Settings recently? Today I could get the app to slow down if I changed my scientific/common name preferences
FWIW I’ve was using the beta version, 1.0.10, in Mexico all last week. Added a bunch of observations, used Explore quite a bit, and tapped on a lot of the observations in the Activity tab, with variable internet service, and didnt notice any slowdown. I’m not sure if that means 1.0.10 fixes this problem, but it still means we haven’t been able to consistently replicate this issue, which makes it difficult to investigate.
I have had this issue as well, also iOS on 1.0.9 (177). Sometimes restarting the app will fix it. when it persists I upload using iNat classic.
To add- I can also scroll, but cannot click on observations, and cannot usually click on any of the 5 buttons in the lower taskbar. Sometimes I can click any of these with a 5-10 second lag between it clicking and opening. When this happens (for example if I click on the green “+” or the three lines for the menu and they open after 5-10 second lag, I will not be able to click any further into the upload options, or any further into any of the menu options (i.e. projects, about, donate, etc etc.))
let me know if i should make this a separate bug report post or if I’m good to just tack on here, because it sounds similar to what it’s doing on my phone :)
Quitting and restarting didnt fix the issue. only waiting enough fixed it, so it feels some kind of slow loading / syncing issue that prevents the app from working until loading / syncing has finished. but it took a long time to finish even over fast 900Mbps Wi-fi. race condition or retry loop somewhere?
no, i hadnt used other app variants to upload recently
The new iNat app becomes frozen/non-responsive for me in a variety of its features. About 90% of the time, the Notifications/Activities section of the app is a problem. As soon as I click on that bell icon, I am taken to the notifications about my observations but I can’t press to see the notifications for those or for the “Others”. All other icons and functions are frozen as well. In the past week, I’ve noticed that this freezing is also happening in the “Explore” section of the app. I get the initial observations near me, but I can’t open any of the observations or use any part of the app. I have the latest version of iNat and I’m running iOS 26. These problems appeared before the iOS update. Restarting the app doesn’t change anything. I’ve restarted my phone and that isn’t changing the problem. These problems appear if I’m using my home Wifi or I’m out and about on a cell signal. I may have to go back to iNat classic.
We just released an update, 1.0.10, to the App Store. There’s no specific fix it for this issue (we’re still trying to find the root cause) but it would be worth trying it out and seeing if it fixes any of this.
Righto: frozen new version. Turning off phone and app to no avail. Dumped app and reinstalled. Worked a treat … for a while, usually a week or so. I’ve had to do the dump/reinstall several times now. What a waste of time, especially when you try to record an important flighty animal. I much prefer the new version (I can glide over some things for a rapid evaluation) but SOOO glitchy. Please tell me things are better now and there is a solution.
