PictureThis - Plant Identifier reviews
What users love and hate, from real reviews
A camera-botanist for anxious plant-care beginners: it sells confidence through instant species ID, but it monetizes the exact moment people install it for — diagnosing a sick plant — and pays for that with trust whenever the diagnosis turns out to be boilerplate.
What users love
Species ID is the real hook: accuracy delivers the 'wow' moment before any payment
Point the camera and within seconds you get a name plus reference photos to confirm; that instant payoff converts skeptics into evangelists and turns the app into a companion on walks and trips. It's the core value that earns forgiveness for everything else.
Just show it tree bark, a leaf etc, it is flawless to identify.
Better than Google at identifying plants. Even identifies trees trees by their bark only in the winter time. Best app ever
totally impressed with the fact I took the picture and it actually knew what it was and showed me pictures of the plant. Not five pages of photos so I had to guess.
Rescue from 'accidental weeding': the app fixes a specific gardener failure mode
The real, non-obvious job isn't curiosity — it's fear of getting it wrong: people pull their own perennials thinking they're weeds and freeze on 'keep or yank.' The app removes exactly that anxiety, which is why reviews get emotional about saved plants. The value sold is confidence to act, not an encyclopedia.
I have a bad habit of planting a perennial and then not recognizing it the next year, so I pull it thinking it's a weed! This app has saved my plants from involuntary plantslaughter!
has help me know the diffrence between a weed and a plant I want to keep.
love it it's perfect for flowers or weeds in my case I'm useless and pull up flowers
Watering reminders turn a one-off identifier into a daily habit — but auto-rescheduling annoys
The watering-and-fertilizing calendar is what retains users past the first scan: people build a 'library' of their plants and return on notifications. It converts curiosity into a ritual and justifies the annual plan for engaged users.
It is very helpful when my plants need some TLC and helps remind me when to water and fertilize.
However, the reminders to water & fertilize are handy.
it automatically changes watering schedules if you miss a day, which I find very annoying.
Two audiences: the at-home 'plant parent' and the field identifier — the app serves both
One loop is the anxious beginner with a couple of houseplants who needs a hand-holding nanny; the other is the hiker, landscaper, or bonsai collector identifying plants on the move worldwide. Serving both jobs from one scanner widens the market well past 'houseplants' and explains loyalty across very different user types.
I really enjoy using this app all over the world to help identify plants i find on hikes and other adventures.
I work for a landscaping company and I use this all the time
Excellent app now I know what's in my yard also use it in collecting yamadori for bonsai
What users hate
One remedy for every illness undermines trust in diagnosis — the flagship feature
Diagnosis is pitched as the reason to pay, yet users notice the treatment is boilerplate: baking soda and pantry remedies for everything, 'plants need attention' on every scan. The moment someone spots the repetition, the diagnostic value collapses — and the paid module starts reading as an excuse-generator, not expertise.
forget about accurate plant diagnostics it always says baking soda for sick plants. Google ai does a better job.
as soon as you think its ok as it can identify but has the same remedy for everything then you get charged
Every diagnosis says plants need attention.
A systematic 'overwatering' bias pushes users toward real plant harm
The diagnosis repeatedly reports overwatering when the soil is bone dry, and trusting beginners stop watering and kill their plants. It's the worst kind of error: not a neutral miss but confident advice that produces the opposite outcome — for exactly the audience (beginners) least able to second-guess it.
Told me i was overwatering when in fact it was bone dry.
telling me my flowers and tomatoes were over watered so I didnt water for 2 days and they all died
It is telling me a tomato plant that looks half dead is okay And another plant That looks okay It's telling me it is in trouble
An unskippable intro animation puts self-promotion between install and first scan
Before the very first ID, users are forced through a minute-long slideshow about how great the app is. The intent is to hook, but the effect is the opposite: people arrive with a concrete task (what is this plant?) and get held hostage, and some uninstall before the product ever performs once.
When you first download the app, it takes you through an unskippable tutorial and brings up multiple times how great the app is. Literally an unskippable slideshow
whatever psychopath on the dev team decided to implement an *unskipable* video to showcase new features, fire them.
1 minute unskippable animation into a paywall. waste of my time, at least show me the paywall before the useless animation.
Genus only, no cultivar — the app loses the audience that matters most to it
Serious gardeners keep named-cultivar collections, but the app returns only the base species: 60 dahlia varieties all come back as just 'dahlia.' These engaged collectors are the ones most willing to pay and stay, yet the resolution is too coarse for their task — so the highest-value users are the ones who churn.
has no idea of individual variations like lily you only get lily. I have 60 varieties of dahlia and all it tells you is it's a dahlia.
fails to identify the cultivar variety of plants I have. If this app was for vehical identification, it would easly see every car as a Ford, Chevy, Honda
plant info is weirdly generic, not closely aligned with specific varieties.
Ignoring region serves California advice to the whole world
The app doesn't localize: in northern Canada it compares everything to California and surfaces species that are exotic for the area. Care advice untethered from climate and season is advice that won't work; for gardening, where everything is regional, this undermines the very usability of its recommendations.
this app does not localize your region and compared everything to California when I'm in Northern Canada.
Didn't seem to take into account my location, not listing plants that are common in my area & instead listing ones that would be exceedingly rare.
it doesn't seem to address landscape plants
Ad-promised 'home recipes' aren't in the product — and back users into dangerous advice
Ads promise milk, cinnamon, baking soda as miracle cures, but the app itself doesn't deliver them — people who paid for months get only a watering schedule. Worse, the promoted 'hacks' (salt and sugar for weeds) are objectively harmful. The gap between marketing and product doesn't just anger users; it drags a reputation for incompetence along with it.
the app claims to advise you to use milk, cinnamon or mineral water ( just a few examples of what is shown on the apps advertising) to help your plant.. paid for extra advise for 6 months & not once did i get advise like that
It doesn't tell me to feed to water with soda or milk, or use cinnamon, etc. My plants have had a couple of problems but no remedies using household things have been advised. False advertising much?
why the heck are you showing SALT as a solution for weeds and undesirables? You should never, ever use salt because it's not selective, it will kill everything
A confident wrong answer is worse than an honest 'I don't know' — the app never hedges
In the field, where ID matters most, the app is confidently wrong: a rose becomes a blackberry bush, four shots of one plant return four species, a dead tree comes back 'flowering.' With no uncertainty signal, beginners take a guess as fact; for an identifier people are taught to trust, false confidence is the core product risk.
bogus.. called a rose bush a European black berry bush...
Four different pictures of the same plant ID four different matches.
App sucks in real world plant ID scenario. Was incorrect every time on my first day in the field.
An education gap: the app promotes invasive species and fails to warn of danger
A product that teaches people about plants gives propagation tips for tree of heaven — a severely invasive species — and barely flags risks. For an app whose value is education, the absence of invasive-and-toxic warnings isn't a missed feature but a failure of the core mission, eroding trust with its most knowledgeable users.
the tree of heaven is extremely invasive in the USA and this app has tips for propogating it! In fact it barely has any negatives discussed.
saying to destroy plants and weeds that are vital to bees and insects, no such things as weeds they are wild flowers
Dishonest about medicinal value of plants. Medicinal plants are labeled as poisonous.
A job mismatch: people install it to 'kill weeds' and get advice to keep them healthy
A meaningful segment arrives with a kill-the-weeds, fix-the-lawn job, and the app identifies the weed and explains how to keep it healthy. The product is optimized for 'I love plants' and ignores the opposite intent — 'I want this gone' — losing a whole category of users whose actual job it doesn't serve.
I thought this app told you how to kill and get rid of weeds. I took a picture of the prickly plant, says it is considered a weed by gardeners and tells me how to keep it healthy. I want the opposite!
I got the app to figure out how to get rid of certain weeds and fix my lawn. Unfortunately, app does not offer that
It just doesn't say how to get rid of over running weeds in beds.
The paywall lands exactly at the sick-plant diagnosis — users hit it before the product proves value
The defining habit moment — finding out what's wrong with a dying plant — is locked behind the subscription: the app says 'your plant is sick' but reveals the rest only after payment. Strategically it misfires: people arrive in a crisis with high intent, and the wall lands before activation — churn happens before the product ever helps once.
I took a picture of a sick tomato plant. The app told me it was sick, but I had to sign up for the premium before I could go any further.
Good app but I have to pay to know how much I need to water ?
If you want to know what the sickness of the plant is you have upgrade it should tell you that is like telling you if you are sick that you need pay for a diagnosis.