My Seek 2025 Year in Review:

* 101 new species observed (down from 141 last year)

Top three kinds:
  * 64 new plants (down from 79)
  * 14 new insects (down from 20)
  * 8 new fungi
* 4 new challenge badges earned (down from 56)

July, June, February were the months I observed the most new species.
Last year: June, March, July.

Seek also gave me a graph of observations per month, and also a map of where I made my discoveries.

As noted last year: https://tantek.com/2025/020/t1/seek-2024-year-in-review

Seek is a delightful free (like actually free, free of tracking, free of surveillance) native mobile application for identifying species.

Made by the iNaturalist folks (https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app), Seek works:
1. works without creating an account
2. works completely offline to identify species
3. adds new species to your local collection on your device

Those first two capabilities (no login wall, offline first) are what we should aspire to when we build #indieweb apps or websites for ourselves and our friends.

This is post 3 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts #yearInReview #iNaturalist #SeekApp

← https://tantek.com/2026/002/t1/find-export-strava-year-in-sport
→ https://tantek.com/2026/004/t1/year-in-sport


Glossary:

login wall
  https://indieweb.org/login_wall
offline first
  https://indieweb.org/offline_first

My Seek 2024 Year in Review:

* 141 new species observed, of those, the top three kinds:
  * 79 plants
  * 20 insects
  * 16 fungi
* 56 challenge badges earned

June was the month I observed the most new species in 2024, followed by March, and then July.

Seek also gave me a graph of observations per month, and also a map of where I made my discoveries.

Rather than posting screenshots of the Year in Review that Seek provided me in the app, I am posting the relevant content here in a post on my personal site, which I know I’ll be able to search and look up in the future.

Seek is a delightful free (like actually free, free of tracking, free of surveillance) native mobile application for identifying species.

Made by the iNaturalist folks (https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app), Seek works without creating an account, and is able to work completely offline to identify species out in the wild (and add them to your local collection).

Seek awards you Species Badges when you discover a number of species of a particular grouping, as well as Challenge Badges when you complete one or more of their monthly challenges that they post.

In some ways it’s like Pokemon Go, except based on finding and collecting observations of real living things.

I have found it quite useful especially when traveling, and wondering is that plant (or animal) the same as one I’ve seen elsewhere, perhaps around home, or is it a slightly different species?

I also really like the good example that Seek provides for how an app can be immediately useful without requiring extra labor (like creating an account, or logging on) on behalf of the person using it.

Lastly, Seek is an excellent example of a truly offline capable app where nearly all of its functionality works just fine without a network connection.

Both of these capabilities (offline first, no login wall) are what we should aspire to when we build #indieweb apps or websites for ourselves and our friends.


This is post 8 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts #yearInReview #iNaturalist #SeekApp

← https://tantek.com/2025/012/t1/eight-years-webmention
→ https://tantek.com/2025/055/t1/three-steps-indieweb-cybersecurity


Glossary:

login wall
  https://indieweb.org/login_wall
offline first
  https://indieweb.org/offline_first

So I just saw this beetle for the first time ever and learned via #SeekApp that it is called a Rustic Sailor Beetle and I just may have never been so charmed in my whole bug watching life. #beetles #insects #bugstodon #PNW #OlympiaWA #nature #photography #NaturePhotography