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An android version would be excellent I look forward to seeing it.

I'll also throw my support behind an android version. I'd rather buy an android than be given any apple product.

I recently got the iOS version of this app, and am loving it. IMO, this is the best way to keep track of my small but rapidly growing collection.

I do have a feature request: the ability to duplicate plants/entries would be awesome. I'm growing from seed, and I currently have an entry per pot of seeds. Assuming I do well enough, Im eventually going to need to repot these seedlings into individual pots. Without the ability to duplicate the seed pot until I have enough entries to cover all the new individual plants, I'll be stuck choosing between doing a ton of manual work (for example, entering a planted date is a lot of work if it's significantly in the past), or losing a lot of the information that I'm collecting while the seedlings are sharing their first pot.

I'm looking forward to the Mac version, but I hope there is some kind of automated syncing. If you forget to sync your changes from one device before making changes on another, it could get complicated to reconcile the two databases. I'll probably pick a "source of truth" device to do all my maintenance in while just using the other devices for review/reference, but it would be nice if I didn't need to worry about that.

Duplicating entries will be in the Mac and PC versions. It's a good idea for iOS too, but I'll need to think how best to implement it. Maybe a long press on the item you want to duplicate?

Syncing is not on the cards, alas. I've struggled with this for years, but I'm yet to find a decent and reliable cross-platform solution that syncs database changes across multiple platforms (Mac, PC, iOS and Android). I had thought the answer was DropBox, but they recently dropped the API I was hoping to use and went in a different direction. There are other options, but they require monthly server fees, and I highly doubt anyone would want to be billed yet another monthly fee! I'm still not convinced about reliability. All the cloud providers tout 'it just works', but why do I continue to hear of so many horror stories about data loss?

AKNicolle wrote:Duplicating entries will be in the Mac and PC versions. It's a good idea for iOS too, but I'll need to think how best to implement it. Maybe a long press on the item you want to duplicate?

You already have an 'edit' button that doesn't appear to do anything other than giving access to a delete button. I'd just add a 'copy' button along with delete.

How are you planning on handling log entries? I would like to see those get duplicated along with the plant. I'm not sure how your database links logs to plants, though, so that could be technically complicated.

Syncing is not on the cards, alas. I've struggled with this for years, but I'm yet to find a decent and reliable cross-platform solution that syncs database changes across multiple platforms (Mac, PC, iOS and Android). I had thought the answer was DropBox, but they recently dropped the API I was hoping to use and went in a different direction. There are other options, but they require monthly server fees, and I highly doubt anyone would want to be billed yet another monthly fee! I'm still not convinced about reliability. All the cloud providers tout 'it just works', but why do I continue to hear of so many horror stories about data loss?

Bummer I was thinking DropBox too since I know 1Password supports it (or at least they used to). It's been a while since I dropped DropBox in favor of iCloud for my 1Password sync though, so I guess that must have changed if DropBox dropped their API.

Log entries are duplicated exactly, including any corresponding photos and plant linkage. If you're duplicating a plant, everything is copied to the duplicate except corresponding log entries. This is because the logs are meant to refer to particular events relating to an individual plant.

AKNicolle wrote:Log entries are duplicated exactly, including any corresponding photos and plant linkage. If you're duplicating a plant, everything is copied to the duplicate except corresponding log entries. This is because the logs are meant to refer to particular events relating to an individual plant.

Doesn't everything about a plant entry also refer (in theory) to an individual plant? What use case are you trying to support by adding duplication for plant entries?

In the workflow that I would like to see, the "parent" plant entry would refer to a pot of seedlings or a clustering cactus that is to be split up and re-potted into multiple pots. In this case, the log entries attached to the parent entry would be completely relevant to the "child" entries that were created by duplication.

Plus, It's much easier to delete log entries from the child entry if you don't want them than it is to add them if you do.

iaeen wrote:

AKNicolle wrote:Log entries are duplicated exactly, including any corresponding photos and plant linkage. If you're duplicating a plant, everything is copied to the duplicate except corresponding log entries. This is because the logs are meant to refer to particular events relating to an individual plant.

Doesn't everything about a plant entry also refer (in theory) to an individual plant? What use case are you trying to support by adding duplication for plant entries?

In the workflow that I would like to see, the "parent" plant entry would refer to a pot of seedlings or a clustering cactus that is to be split up and re-potted into multiple pots. In this case, the log entries attached to the parent entry would be completely relevant to the "child" entries that were created by duplication.

Plus, It's much easier to delete log entries from the child entry if you don't want them than it is to add them if you do.

Good point! The case I was thinking of was where you had a bunch of mature plants that were of the same species, and most (or all) of the details were the same. It wouldn't necessarily make sense to duplicate the log entries for these, since they're different plants. However, I didn't consider seedlings where you'd have a bunch of them in one pot, and the log entries may be applicable to all the plants in the pot. In that case you'd expect the log entries would be duplicated, too.

I've since gone ahead and updated the feature to duplicate everything about the plant, including the corresponding log entries and any photos associated with each log entry. As you said, it would be easier to delete any log entries you don't need than it would be to recreate them all for each duplicate. Thanks for the feedback!

A quick development update... work on the Mac and PC apps is substantially complete. All that's left is to work on the language localizations and get all the screenshots and other metadata in order. Plus a bunch more last-minute testing

Awesome. Can't wait for it to be released.

I am working on cataloging my current collection with the iOS app. It is working pretty well, but I have alot to account for so it's taking some time. Do you think it would be possible to add a feature where you could upload more photos of the plant then arrange them chronologically so that you can see the plant progress through the years?
Thanks,
Will

Will,

I think you can do this with the current app. It shows the top three in the main plant page, but when you go to the photo page, you can see as may as you want and can re-arrange them by dragging and dropping.

Will: iaeen is correct. The latest iOS update that came out a few days ago also allows you to add multiple photos from your photo library at a time, rather than having to add them one at a time. You can also add text captions to each photo if there's anything you want to note for each one.

Today I released the Mac version of Cactus Album. More info in today's post. The PC version will be another week or two.

Today I released the PC version of Cactus Album. More info in today's post. Enjoy!

For those of you who collect plants other than cacti and succulents, or who have gardens you'd like to document, this week I've released a new iOS app called Plant Album. In addition to tracking plant details, watering schedules, and creating log entries, Plant Album also allows you to group plants into gardens. The app is localized into several languages including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Portuguese.

You can learn more about the new app at http://PlantAlbum.com

If you live in the Northern hemisphere, I hope you and your plants are keeping warm. We're getting some nasty polar vortex weather up here near Chicago :O