Review Insights · Google Play
Seek by iNaturalist
iNaturalist · 10,279 ratings · ★ 3.3
3.3
★★★★★
10,279 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 47 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 · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "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 ph…" - Bryanna Alcantara-Flick
2
"identify"
11 negative reviews mention this · 23% of all complaints
★★★★★ "couldnt identify a dandy lian" - bill Y
3
"plants"
8 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "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 ph…" - Bryanna Alcantara-Flick
4
"anything"
8 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "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 alwa…" - Sarah Graham
5
"observations"
7 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "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 ph…" - Bryanna Alcantara-Flick
6
"works"
7 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "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 alwa…" - Sarah Graham
7
"anymore"
7 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "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 alwa…" - Sarah Graham
8
"species"
7 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "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 alwa…" - Sarah Graham
9
"photos"
7 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "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.…" - Ian Ulrich
10
"photo"
6 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "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 ph…" - Bryanna Alcantara-Flick
11
"love"
6 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "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 alwa…" - Sarah Graham
12
"identifying"
6 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "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 alwa…" - Sarah Graham
📋 All 47 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").
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!
camera issuess !
I used to love this app, but it has not worked for several months. Freezes up whenever I take a picture so I can no longer catalog species. tried uninstalling and reinstalling. Please fix and I will happily switch my review to 5 stars - thank you!
needs updates. zoom doesn't work anymore
it's not so good anymore. it used to identify plants and bugs fairly quickly and correctly but now not so much. not sure what happened. it's disappointing.
It just spins after identifying the plant and then closes out and I lose the image & identification. It also seems to really struggle to identify things now, I've tested with house plants that I know for sure what they are and it just wants to give me the plant clade (monocots or dicot) or the family name but not the actual species. Really disappointing since I've had this app for around 2 years now.
I can't upload pictures anymore! I used to love this app but most of my identifying is uploading pictures after the fact and unfortunately the app refuses to let me do that anymore. Very frustrating. Would be 5 stars. EDIT: I tried clearing up cache and restarting the app and wound up losing the last year's worth of observations. Don't download this app unless you have time to be frustrated and annoyed!
this app was once amazing and fun to use. in the past few months bugs and non-functionality has led.memto uninstall. camera button was past the bottom of the screen through soft keys and upon species capture app would freeze for minutes and not register observations. the worst of it all is no cloud/data storage online so if you have to clear cache/storage you use literally all your progress. loved the app but can't waste time on it anymore
After years of fighting constant freezing, lost all my observations despite being logged into an account. Years of observations. This app is a disaster.
I downloaded this app to help with homeschooling. However, I am having problems. The app identification works well, but when it asks you to take a picture, it just gets stuck. No matter how long you leave it, it never goes any further. it would be great if you could get this problem fixed
This app used to function well, but it now consistently freezes either while capturing a photo or when attempting to upload it to iNaturalist. I even purchased a new phone, but the issue persists.
This app can't identify anything.
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.
miss the challenges. only real reason I used it.
it was great at first but now it has trouble identifying anything and saving my finds. it isn't doing the thing it's supposed to do
No longer works. You take a picture and it just sits there and does not actually record anything in your observations.
Can still identify things but can no longer take photos. The camera just freezes.
Moderately useful in narrowing down plant identification. Rarely identifies completely. I have had some glaring mistakes, like when it identified my Siamese cat as a domestic dog...
app barely works and takes forever to load photos, let alone id anything. I used it easily a few years ago with no issues . this version is essentially unusable.
works part of the time, and when it does work it is super slow. iNaturalist, do better!!
It won't take pictures. Shutter button causes the app to freeze and has to be killed and restarted. Haven't been able to save a species in months.
I can't stand that I can't use the flash when I need to take a Pic in dim light. not only that but it can never identify what I picture.
I love the idea, and it's a great resource when you're out and about. I've used this app for a number of years, but recently the app can quickly identify a species but then takes forever to process a picture. Half the time it doesn't remember or register the picture and you can't be sure if a photo taken in advance will identify down to the species beforehand so it's a risky workaround. I'd love to give this more stars but it's kind of failing at its key purpose currently...
pros: ad free, and costs nothing. fun to use for the most basic functions. cons: Application workflow. Too many repetitive steps moving between functions and the app constantly returns back to the very start screen. e. g. loading consecutive images from Google photos is a PIA.
honestly it's terrible by the time it comes to an answer (it normally doesn't actually get to one) you could have just found the plant by describing it on Google. useless most of the time, literally says "try different angles" and then assumed you stopped scanning the same plant if you change angles so what's the point? frustrating because it has a good design but it doesn't work at all so its more insulting knowing what it's trying to do and how is a good idea but too jankey to actually work.
The app has a long standing software bug that is unresolved. Overtime, taking a photo with the app has taken an increasingly long time. Now, the app can no longer use the camera to take a photo, it just hangs. It will still ID things without snapping a photo, but can't save the observations anymore. Using the app to ID existing photos has never worked very well, so that is not a good option, either.
doesn't always work about 20% of the time you take a pic and just get a loading circle
Sentiment summary
51%
Positive (4-5★)
13%
Neutral (3★)
36%
Negative (1-2★)