Hi everyone, we just updated the Explore page in the iNaturalist iPhone app to have a simpler header and search functionality to find taxa, users, projects, and places from the same screen. It’s available in the latest version of the iNaturalist app, version 1.2.0 (234). You can update it directly in the App Store if the app hasn’t already updated automatically for you.
Here’s what’s new:
Universal search: You can search for any taxon, user, or project in the top search bar, then set your location in the second search bar as “nearby,” “worldwide,” or an iNaturalist Place. If you’ve used Explore on the iNaturalist website, this process will feel familiar to you.
Species you haven’t seen: You can now also search for species you haven’t seen yet in specific places.
Recent searches: You can quickly return to searches you’ve made recently.
Saved searches: In addition to seeing your recent searches, you can save any combination of filters to return to whenever you want. Once you have a search initiated, a star button will appear — tap that to add a saved search. You can remove your saved searches from the menu or search results.
You can read more about this update on the iNat Blog and see the how-to page on iNat Help. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback!
How can I open observers tab? There are only two tabs, observations and species. In your screenshot I see a remnant of the third tab, but I fail to find it on my phone.
Honestly, while I support continued improvements and added functionalities to iNat Next if these allow it to better meet the needs of app users, it raises some questions for me about priorities.
A central question is: Does the app need to be able to do everything the website does? How, why, and in what contexts are people using the app and how many of these uses would be met just as well by making the website mobile-friendly?
And in connection with this: What considerations are going into the decisions about app development? More functions come with trade-offs: the app requires more memory and more computing power, and likely higher mobile data usage. More functions also mean greater complexity, making it less easy for new users to figure out.
While forum users are not a representative sample, one common theme that keeps coming up here is a wish for a lightweight app that can be used on the go with limited internet access and by people with older/less expensive phones. The current app development seems to be going in the opposite direction, and I find myself wondering what the reasons were for concluding that this is what app users want and need.
I’ll admit that I am primarily a website user – while I have the android app and use it occasionally for uploading photos from my phone or checking notifications – for most of my activities I prefer using an interface with a larger screen and a keyboard.
I seldom use the app for either searching for observations or for identification, even though I would occasionally like to do this while on the train, because these activities are too inconvenient in the android app and much too slow and buggy on my older phone. One way to address this is, of course, to add functionality to the app. However, if given a choice, I would probably prefer to use the website if it were mobile-friendly instead of relying on the app for this purpose.
Some of us would probably be delighted to have such a function on the website as well.
Any browser has the option to bookmark a search, as the search has a unique URL.
At risk of dvierting the conversation (and if needed I can split it off) – As for discussions of lightweight app vs feature-full app vs desktop… it’s not so straightforward.
Everyone needs a smartphone merely to exist in the modern world - so an option for phones is mandatory, and especially one for older or off-brand phones. The desktop environment is fundamentally different from the phone due to the big screen and lack of portability – though when it comes to pure computing power, while a computer has a much higher ceiling, lower-tier computers and smartphones are actually not so far apart.
To some, a desktop is more accessible, to others it is less accessible. But because it is a more-or-less stationary object – field laptops are expensive!! – the use cases should be expected to be different.
To me, the theoretical ideal is this: the apps and website all have the same maximum number of functions. But the minimum number of functions, and more importantly the functions which are surfaced first, and prioritized, in either mobile or computer, should necessarily be different.
In this case though, I think there was a lot of demand for these features by mobile users, and it doesn’t seem like it’d be too power-hungry unless designed very poorly.
I’m not saying that searching shouldn’t be available for app users.
It is more the question for me of whether the goal is to provide all the functions available on the website and whether this reflects how people want to use the app. I’m asking because I don’t know – as I said, I’m not a typical app user.
I may also be biased by the fact that the android app has not reliably worked for me without crashing (on my outdated phone) for quite some time, in spite of the fact that it appears to be considerably less complex than the iNat Next app. So I have sympathy for those who were already saying that the Next app was too clunky even before these updates. It may well be that there are other causes and that adding these features does not have any additional negative effect performance – again, asking because I don’t know.
One of the reasons I’m asking is because it isn’t clear to me whether the desire for certain functions is a desire to have these functions in the app specifically, or whether it is primarily a desire to be able to access these functions efficiently from a phone, regardless of what interface this involves. There may well be advantages to having many of these functions in the app (e.g., not requiring people to switch between app and browser on their phone), and that this gain would outweigh any loss in streamlining.
I’m aware that the bookmark function of one’s browser can be used for saving searches. But just as many of us appreciate sticky settings (not all of which are reliably sticky, unfortunately), some may find it more convenient to access frequently used searches from within iNat instead of creating an extra folder for their iNat bookmarks. Again, just making an observation.
This is one of the best updates to ever hit this app. I love being able to save complex search strings so much, and the unobserved taxa filter is a godsend. Only issue so far is the inability to name search strings, since it makes differentiating some hard. But still, amazing update!
But like others above, I hope sober thought is going into whether making the app fancier is the highest priority. In interacting with the public I still find that a huge percent of iNat app users only use the photo ID function and then quit before submitting anything because, as one user told me, “I don’t want to have to fill out a form every time I see something.” How can more of those users be pulled in (and made to be good observers)?
To me it sounds like this person should be using Seek rather than iNaturalist. Maybe if they enjoy Seek enough then Seek can start prompting them about the benefits of preserving their observations, at which point they may see the value in filling out the form for iNat more. I’m not sure how the iNat app can make creating observations more efficient than it already is without even more tradeoffs against identifiers and data quality.
Does Seek actually prompt users about the benefits of iNat? I hope so! That would be a good step. The one thing I could envision with iNat that would make submission smoother would be to have an Express button that would take a photo, add a CV ID, and submit to iNat with geotag and date. But I can see some issues with that, too.
And we look at feedback every week from app users, plus reviews, etc, to inform decisions. I’ll say that a very common theme is that people want to be able to ID in the app when they’re in transit, waiting around somewhere, in bed, etc. This does not get the app all the way there (that would require a full Identify section, probably), but saved searches allow for a much faster way to access observations one wants to identify. It’s a big improvement in my book, and makes me more likely to ID. Hopefully it will mean more identifying overall, but obviously we’ll have to wait and see.
Most of this update is a rearrangement of the Explore user interface, which puts the most used searches first, rather than presenting all the filters at once. So it reduces complexity in some ways, and should make it easier for users to make common searches. The only real new functionality is saved/recent searches.
I’d say no. Again, this specific update is mostly a rearrangement. I will say that most or all of a website’s functionality is often expected, since a lot of major apps do include a ton of functionality.
Regarding space, I’ll note the base size (not documents and data, which can vary by usage) in MB of some common apps on my iPhone:
Instagram 578.8
Google Maps 457.4
Venmo 447.7
YouTube 354
WhatsApp 340.3
iNaturalist 225.9 (that includes the CV model, which is also a taxonomic model that you can use to manually enter over 100k taxa when offline)
eBird 79.1 (although you really need to download a species pack to make it useful)
iNat Classic 33.4 (although it doesn’t include a CV/taxonomic model, which makes it less useful when offline)
How is adding more features to the iOS app affecting the development of the android version?
The current android app is so slow that I hardly use it in the field. A new version that takes more computing power is not going to be an improvement, especially if it does not have basic crop and rotate functionality.
But, currently the only way to tell what it might be like is to sideload an experimental version that as far as I can tell isn’t actually optimized for android.
Thank you! How about resource usage stats, though – data download/upload, internal memory and cpu? In the background as well as when actively using the app in various ways.
I was excited to see the “species I haven’t observed” feature. However, it apparently only shows me species which I have mever observed ANYwhere, instead of just in a specific focused area. Can there be a way to search species I haven’t seen in one specific area?
