Review Insights · Google Play
Seek by iNaturalist
iNaturalist · 10,383 ratings · ★ 3.3
3.3
★★★★★
10,383 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 42 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"camera"
12 negative reviews mention this · 29% of all complaints
★★★★★ "This app just isn't accurate anymore. When I first downloaded it years ago, it wasn't perfect, but it wouldn't look at a pile of boxes that the camera glimpsed as I went to aim it and say "human"..." - Cam
2
"identify"
10 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Easy to use but it's not correct. I asked it to identify 4 things that I already know the identity to just to test it. It got 1 of the 4 right. I did simple things like lemon tree, citronella, tomato and elderberry (it did identify the elde…" - Tammie
3
"plants"
9 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Can identify a spider as a spider. but not the species, same with butterflies and most plants. Uninstalled." - Stuart McNab
4
"every"
7 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I mean... when I am using an app like this and trying to identify a plant, the first thing I want to know every time is if it is toxic, or not. I have to ask my browser nearly every time, after I use iSeek to tell me what it is, "is this to…" - Julie Lewis
5
"photo"
7 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Was excited to use this app upon downloading, I like the layout and the whole gimmick of collecting species. Tried to ID a photo of a caterpillar, it said it was a pine sawfly caterpillar, but I googled it and after scrolling for a few minu…" - Silas
6
"work"
5 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "dont waste your time. the app doesn't work, plain and simple. tried multiple pictures of the same insect. trying to see if it was a tick. it was not, it took another app "picture insect" only one try to determine it was a spined soldier bug…" - Alex F
7
"almost"
5 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Too buggy (pun intended) When taking a picture it freezes up very often and you have to close the app. By then whatever you are trying to identify is gone. And considering you usually have to have your phone almost on top of whatever it is,…" - Joe Cagle
8
"better"
5 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "it's not even identifying a dog.My eyes and brain is identifying better than this dumb app, am uninstalling." - LaNa
📋 All 42 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
dont waste your time. the app doesn't work, plain and simple. tried multiple pictures of the same insect. trying to see if it was a tick. it was not, it took another app "picture insect" only one try to determine it was a spined soldier bug.
worked great until they integrated AI, now literally every bug identification is wrong. used to be such a great app, too bad
Can identify a spider as a spider. but not the species, same with butterflies and most plants. Uninstalled.
Terrible identification. Took 5 pictures of the same individual (rabbit hutch spider) all IDs were different, none of them was right.
No idea what has happened to this app, despite reinstalling, update and such it can not identify any plants and just says everything is didcots from Poppy to drosera all are didcot
This app just isn't accurate anymore. When I first downloaded it years ago, it wasn't perfect, but it wouldn't look at a pile of boxes that the camera glimpsed as I went to aim it and say "human"...
works with apple, with android is a headache, if don't have IOS do not bother yourself, if u want to save space, just use Google photo to find out what the things are ;) I hate when apps do not work properly and app staff engineers technicians or whatever they get called do something about it once they realize numbers are falling
app is absolutely useless. showed it a clear picture of a fish and the best it gave me was that it was an animal............
It isn’t doing its job. Nothing I took a pic of was identified correctly. When it identified a pot of flowers as a human, that was the final straw. I really wanted this app to work and gave it several chances, but unfortunately it failed every time. I ran the same pictures through ChatGPT, and they were identified correctly. It’s a huge disappointment when a specialised app performs far worse than a general AI tool.
very inaccurate, would not recomand
the first thing I took a photo of, the app completely misidentified, but there is no way as far as I can tell to report back to the model that this was a bad match or to delete the observation (if there is a way then the UI/UX leaves a lot to be desired because it's nonobvious)
it's not even identifying a dog.My eyes and brain is identifying better than this dumb app, am uninstalling.
Poor identification. Identified a spider as a spider...
Seek was originally a great tool to help ID plants, animals, and insects on nature walks and hikes. The most recent (spring '26) update rendered it entirely nonfunctional. Biggest issues: Camera freezes out when trying to actually take a photo in the app, If you need to uninstall and reinstall you lose all prior observations, When IDing a past photo you only have access to images saved in certain places... like in my printer driver app?
couldnt identify a dandy lian
couldn't even take one photo.
This app claims it has accurate identifications with no warning about not using it for foraging. It is not accurate and frequently misidentifies dangerously toxic plants, fungi, and other wildlife. I will be suing for dangerous and false claims. No AI app is sufficient enough to claim "accurate" and the slightly more reputable ones tell you outright not to use them for foraging purposes.
I have so much love for this app, but sadly it's time to say goodbye. I recently upgraded to a new phone, & it has a micro camera I was thrilled about. Especially for using seek, & Inaturalist. I tend to record a lot of Insects, and plants. Now it won't identify anything I'm viewing, & it won't identify photos I've already taken. there's no way to swap which camera I'm using. I do hope there's a way to change that in the future, but until then I won't be using seek anymore. I'll miss it 💔
almost 9 years of survey work across all of California gone. data should be saved to the account, not the app itself. if you use this app, never delete it!!
the app used to perform a few days back but these days, it is behaving like a dumb child. Missing very clear identifications, cannot trace current location even though every permission is given, if we power off the phone while the app camera is on, and again turn the phone on, the camera crashes. You have to exit the camera and turn it on again. The app fails to recognise different stages of a species, example the terrestrial form of Hygrophila difformis or the larva of Greater Wax Moth.
Can't identify from an existing photo and app is pushing for camera access. Smells like a scam.
couldn't really identify anything at all. plantnet is infinitely better.
I used to love this app, but here recently, been getting a 'your device is not supported' message. All devices this app has supported in the past should still support. guess I will have to look for a new plant identification app.
This app is absalutly trash. I cant even use the camera and it kicks me out of the app every 30 seconds. every time I try to use the camera it says its unable to use camera even tho I can see a small glimpse of the camera frame on my screen. I wouldn't recommend this app as its just a waste of your time. therefore I give it 1 star.
Why do you want to know my location?
This app never knows enough to ID plants. Also only a few birds. It mostly says "we aren't sure, take another picture ". I'm looking for another app. For birds, it usually says "perching" birds unless a really well known one like cardinal. pooh. going to try another app.
Your new AI model ain't it... can't even tell the difference between my domestic rabbit and a domestic cat 🤣 Insists that my rabbit is a cat or dog.
Seek app is terrible. IDs are often just wrong. The camera is awful. And if you don't have an iphone you will lose all your observations if you upgrade phones, 100s of them! Seek & iNaturalist: Do better!
Easy to use but it's not correct. I asked it to identify 4 things that I already know the identity to just to test it. It got 1 of the 4 right. I did simple things like lemon tree, citronella, tomato and elderberry (it did identify the elderberry correctly).
I mean... when I am using an app like this and trying to identify a plant, the first thing I want to know every time is if it is toxic, or not. I have to ask my browser nearly every time, after I use iSeek to tell me what it is, "is this toxic?". That in mind, I can only give 2 stars.
Too buggy (pun intended) When taking a picture it freezes up very often and you have to close the app. By then whatever you are trying to identify is gone. And considering you usually have to have your phone almost on top of whatever it is, it makes you miss quite a few things
Was excited to use this app upon downloading, I like the layout and the whole gimmick of collecting species. Tried to ID a photo of a caterpillar, it said it was a pine sawfly caterpillar, but I googled it and after scrolling for a few minutes, none of the photos I found looked similar to it. Tried IDing more but after that first photo, any image I tried would infinitely buffer even after force stopping. (For clarification, I was selecting from my gallery, not using the built-in camera.)
It's wonderful and I almost love the app, except for three big annoying problems: 1) Android's navigation bar overlaps the Settings/Take photo/Gallery buttons on the bottom of the screen in photo-taking mode. 2) Give us a way to permanently disable the warning. I'm a 36-year old professional, I don't need to be condescendingly told multiple times a day not to eat random plants I find in the wild. The big problem is you sometimes have only seconds from the time you see an interesting insect to the time you can take a photo, and having to dismiss the warning every single time (tapping the button often fails and takes multiple taps to register) can mean the difference between getting and not getting a photo. 3) Something with the app's access to the camera that freezes it up if you turn off the screen while the camera mode is active. After every submission you have to specifically navigate back the main screen of the app before you turn off your phone screen, otherwise the app permanently loses access to the camera until you restart the app.
Says it identifies trees but I tried five times and it kept saying that it's still learning couldn't figure it out
when I click the camera it says restart app. it could be a great app but doesn't work.
Not sure what happened when they updated their model but it almost never works anymore. It can barely distinguish between monocot and dicot. Usually doesn't come up with anything. I used to love this app but now I just use Gemini which always works and will give confidence percentage. It's sad that a large AI is significantly better at identifying species than an app specifically designed to do so.
Used to be super useful for identifying flora and fauna and building your own personal database. Now the camera never works (works fine on other apps) and as a result the app can't identify anything beyond either the kingdom or maybe family. I miss using it on my hikes. :(
Terrible memory leak. Have no idea why an app taking photos of plants and animals could eat so much memory and crash that frequently
AMAZING app, but almost broken using well-documented native android features. If you use approximate location it will prompt location at EVERY step. If you allow limited camera access it won't save photos. Desperately needs fixes.
works most of the time but also it's pretty slow. also did things such as identifying a domesticated duck as a barn owl?? better for plants and fungus than animals
bad, WHY IS NO TIGER IN SUNDARBANS NATIONAL PARK?
It used to be a lot more accurate but something changed a couple years ago. It misidentifies stuff a lot more often then it gets it correct now.
Sentiment summary
52%
Positive (4-5★)
13%
Neutral (3★)
35%
Negative (1-2★)