CrossPrism Nature Guide

CrossPrism Nature Guide is a free iPhone and iPad app from Excelsis Consulting that identifies plants, fungi and animals in real time. It is meant for people who want to observe the natural world around them, find out what they are looking at, and keep photos of notable moments in nature, such as a flower opening in the morning or a bird pecking an acorn into a branch.

Unlike many identification apps, CrossPrism Nature Guide is built to work in undeveloped areas without an internet connection, so identification does not depend on a network signal. The app performs realtime recognition of the subject in view. Photos of these moments can be saved, so the user can look back on and recall remarkable sightings and write their own story around them.

Recognition covers about 7.3K bird species, 30K flower species, 11K leaf species, 29K insect species, 7.5K fungi species and 7K underwater species, along with about 1.9K mammals, 2.8K reptiles and 1.5K amphibians. CrossPrism Nature Guide also gives a subjective image quality rating for a photo. For fungi, CrossPrism advises users not to eat anything they identify.

CrossPrism Nature Guide is free, with no in-app purchases listed. It requires iOS 16.4 or later on iPhone, iPadOS 16.4 on iPad, or visionOS 1.0 on Apple Vision, and it is in English. The download is 392.3 MB. According to the developer, identifiers, usage data and diagnostics may be collected, but they are not linked to the user's identity.

Use cases

• Identifying birds, flowers and insects in remote places with no internet signal
• Finding out which mushroom or other fungus is growing nearby, without eating it
• Identifying fish and other underwater life, for example at an aquarium
• Identifying a plant from its leaves
• Keeping a photo record of nature sightings