Problem with seeming duplication of observations on mobile app (Android) in previous two days

Bug Reports
1

I’m having trouble with mobile uploads. I have it even with single uploads getting hung up, crashing the app, or duplicating the observation (at least on my end). I’m on Android.

Two days ago, I deleted one of the ‘duplicate’ observations and it deleted both. Yesterday I deleted a different duplicate, and it worked fine, though it did duplicate by itself.

I think it might be related to a recent update, since I downloaded that two days ago and tried uploading a few hours later.

I haven’t had any major bugs (aside from crashes) on the app for a while, so it seems likely. I don’t think I will be able to replicate the error, but I will update here with screenshots if it crops up again.

My iNat version is 1.25.11, not sure about the Android Version, Version 12 is all I can find (software updated 2 days ago).

Platform (Android, iOS, Website):

App version number: 12

Browser: N/A

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:

Screenshots of what you are seeing : None available currently

Description of problem :

Step 1: Upload a photo through the app

Step 2: add ID and location, notes

Step 3: submit, wait for upload, ‘two’ observations appear

1 Like
2

I’m having perhaps a similar problem.
When I make an observation in the field, sometimes the app gets hung up on the camera ( I take the photo but it doesn’t register in the app somehow and gets stuck on the camera screen as if I hadn’t taken the photo). when this happens, usually two observations are created. One will have the location and date/time but no photo, and then the second one will have the photo but no location or date/time.
Super frustrating. I noticed it first a few days ago - maybe a week at most. It doesn’t happen to every observation (seems more like to be the first or second ones I make in a sequence) but it is a pain to delete the bad observations and add in the missing information (either photos or location/date/time) to get a good observation out of it.
I’m using Android version 1.25.7 (522) running on a Pixel 2. It a somewhat older phone so I thought that that was the problem at first.

Matt

1 Like
3

They’ve had this bug of “false duplicates” for a while on the Android app. It seems to happen when the upload process gets interrupted, for example when you have poor cell reception. As a workaround, you can get the extra copies of the observation to disappear by logging out of the app and then logging back in.

4

I’ve been using the app for years, never had this particular issue. I had full wifi and cell signal at the time as well.

Logging out and back in did not resolve the issue. I haven’t had it reproduce yet, so I mainly posted to see if others are having the same issue, and in case it does crop up again.

1 Like
5

Seems to be the same problem and timing as my issue. Same OS and similar app version. I hadn’t noted whether there was any hang-up at the adding photos step, I added from my ‘gallery’ I believe, but I’ll double check if it was from ‘library’, since I might have also switched settings on that before the error cropped up.

6

When this happens to me, I’m not trying to upload observations. The only use of a connection would be to get a location for the observation. Something goes wrong when making the observation, specifically when taking the photo.

7

The same issue has recurred as of two days ago while duplicating an observation for something growing on a barnacle shell. I have URLs here:

original observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/104845756
duplicated observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/104845899
‘extra’ duplicated observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/104845899

Side note–I haven’t been able to load screenshots to the forums via Firefox in about a week, but I might report that separately.