Seek by iNaturalist

10.6K reviews
Content rating
Everyone
1M+
Downloads
Content rating
Everyone
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About this app

Use the power of image recognition technology to identify the plants and animals all around you. Earn badges for seeing different types of plants, birds, fungi and more!

• Get outside and point the Seek Camera at living things

• Identify wildlife, plants, and fungi and learn about the organisms all around you

• Earn badges for observing different types of species and participating in challenges


OPEN THE CAMERA AND START SEEKING!

Found a mushroom, flower, or bug, and not sure what it is? Open up the Seek Camera to see if it knows!

Drawing from millions of wildlife observations on iNaturalist, Seek shows you lists of commonly recorded insects, birds, plants, amphibians, and more in your area. Scan the environment with the Seek Camera to identify organisms using the tree of life. Add different species to your observations and learn all about them in the process! The more observations you make, the more badges you’ll earn!

This is a great app for families who want to spend more time exploring nature together, and for anyone who wants to learn more about the life all around them.

KID-SAFE

Seek does not require registration and does not collect any user data by default. Some user data will be collected if you choose to sign in with an iNaturalist account, but you must be over 13 or have your parents permission to do so.

Seek will ask permission to turn on location services, but your location is obscured to respect your privacy while still allowing species suggestions from your general area. Your precise location is never stored in the app or sent to iNaturalist unless you sign in to your iNaturalist account and submit your observations.

Our image recognition technology is based on observations submitted to iNaturalist.org and partner sites, and identified by the iNaturalist community.

Seek is part of iNaturalist, a not-for-profit organization. Seek was made by the iNaturalist team with support from the California Academy of Sciences, the National Geographic Society, Our Planet on Netflix, WWF, HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, and Visipedia.
Identify plants and animals
Updated on
Sep 23, 2026

Data safety

Safety starts with understanding how developers collect and share your data. Data privacy and security practices may vary based on your use, region, and age. The developer provided this information and may update it over time.
  • No data shared with third parties
    Learn more about how developers declare sharing
  • This app may collect these data types
    Location, Personal info, and Photos and videos
  • Data is encrypted in transit
  • You can request that data be deleted

Ratings and reviews

10.4K reviews
Derek Wolf
May 28, 2024
Edit: It never identifies anything anymore. It was good at first. The overall app is good. It's easy to navigate, and it seems to work pretty well most of the time. The camera is the worst part. 7/10 times it won't identify what I'm looking at, but gets stuck at family or genus. If the camera quality were a little better and it could ID quicker, it would definitely get another star or two.
220 people found this review helpful
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A Google user
October 11, 2019
this app is awesome, its like having a Poke-dex but for real animals and plants! so much fun to use, and i finally get to know the names of the species in the area ive always seen, but never been able to identify. I had to change to 3 stars however, because I frequently scan species and get a mis identification. You need to add a "flag this ID for review" or something like that for when we don't feel the identification is accurate.
40 people found this review helpful
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Dan Ruth
September 3, 2020
I really like this app. It's pretty intuitive to use, and has done a good job identifying backyard plants and weeds! I'd love it even more if there was an option to read more information about a particular species. The app pulls an excerpt from Wikipedia, but doesn't allow you to click on the full Wikipedia entry to finish reading. You can't even copy/paste the scientific name because the app doesn't allow you to highlight it.
16 people found this review helpful
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iNaturalist
September 8, 2020
Hi Dan, apps in the children's category unfortunately do not allow copying and pasting because of children's privacy concerns. You can see the full Wikipedia link if you log into iNaturalist -- this verifies that you are an adult user and allows for more functionality within the app.

What’s new

Minor updates and bug fixes