Platform(s), such as mobile, website, API, other: mobile; currently not implemented on Android at least, not sure about iOS
URLs (aka web addresses) of any pages, if relevant:
Description of need: Ease of use of the Seek app
Feature request details: It would be a straightforward, but useful improvement to implement directly sharing photos from photo gallery apps to the Seek app for identification, as one can do with the iNaturalist app. Right now, one can only enter the Seek app and select photos from the gallery there. I’ve only looked for this feature on Android; I’m not sure if it’s already implemented on iOS.
That sort of use is not really what Seek as developed for. It was meant more as a private and secure tool for underage users to keep them from inadvertently sharing information that’s potentially dangerous for them to do (eg. their own location data), and is meant as a casual poke-around type app.
If you want greater functionality, then move over to the iNat app which is geared toward adults and has many more options.
I think the request here is the ability to go to the device’s Gallery app, tap on a photo, then share that to Seek, correct? It has nothing to do privacy or sharing to iNat, I believe. If so, I think it’d be a fine but low priority addition to the app.
I do use the iNaturalist app primarily, but Seek has one feature I use sometimes that iNat does not: the offline recognition model. In environments without internet access, this feature would be convenient for roughly checking plants on Seek before uploading them on iNat, or for checking plants that one doesn’t intend to upload, like house plants.
Seek would likely need to have a number of other changes made to it in order to strip metadata from images if this were to be implemented. Unless users have explicitly made setting changes to their phones and photos then there is metadata embedded in those that goes against the privacy issues Seek was developed to address.
