Recently I saw a comment somewhere that someone felt they had mastered all of iNat’s functionality within weeks. This surprised me because as I have said, I feel like this platform is a bit of an iceberg, wherein there are all these uses and intricacies of which I am unaware, even as I am gleefully …

I identified through the explore page for an entire year before realising the Identify page existed…

For months I did identifications from UK and would search for where the new ones began by remembering what I had seen before. Then I noticed the button for marking a whole page of observations as reviewed. More recently I found the way to add an extra photo after you have submitted the observation …

Searching by observation field! This feature is a bit hidden. If an observation has an observation field, for example “Provisional Species Name”, you can click on the name of the observation field and it will pop up an interface for searching by that observation field. I used iNat for years before d…

The 3 and 3 letter trick Leu con to get https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/320039-Leucospermum-conocarpodendron . D for dicots, F for ferns. The keyboard shortcuts in Identify X Casual, A Agree, C Comment. And more depending on which screen you are on. Annotate caterpillar L and L. And then text exp…

I think Wikis exist on the forum for these types of tips? But probably viewed WAY less than threads, so it’s good to “surface it” here

No, actually. A lot of these are user created, which since you are newer you likely may not realize. Prior to posting I did a search to make sure there was no existing similar topic (I know you likely did the same, as I have noticed you like to provide links to similar or related threads); I know t…

What Diana said. Just typing the beginnings of words! That was amazing when I found you could do that. It took me a long time to start using Identify. I was just using Explore, then opening individual observations in new tabs so I could add IDs. I know there is still lots to learn about how everyt…

Maybe I’m a minority, but, the existence of traditional projects! For too long I thought you could only make projects that could be automatically filtered, and wondered whatever happened to, well, traditional projects! I guess it doesn’t help that it’s tucked away at the bottom of the “create projec…

That the Filters button has an “identify” option. I knew about the Identify tab, but when I would pick a given project or user, there was no Identify tab for that project or user; I was having to open new tabs for each obervation I wanted to review. The “identify” option in Filters changed that.

What iNat function, feature, use or aspect do you wish you had learned earlier?

General

jeanphilippeb March 19, 2025, 7:00pm 5

Can I re-order photos?

How to change the order of the photos

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What is the one thing you wish you could do on iNaturalist? General	47	4809	August 23, 2019
The Future of iNat: What Would You Like To See Improved? General	67	1714	April 1, 2026
Proposal for a new filter option: the 'ID tips' button General web	58	1691	March 29, 2025
Making identifying more fun/interesting - wiki General	24	4509	June 30, 2021
Paper about inaturalist The benefits of contributing to the citizen science platform iNaturalist as an identifier General	67	3972	January 8, 2023

What iNat function, feature, use or aspect do you wish you had learned earlier?

Can I re-order photos?

How to change the order of the photos

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