Rock Identifier
reviews and complaints

I was shocked to see how accurate this app is in verifying what type of stone or gemstone I have. I was always doubtful if I was getting what I truly paid for on Etsy and Amazon and believed the type of gemstone I was buying I was actually getting. To my surprise some weren’t what they said they were. I did test more than once on this app and even tried other apps and they were way off and not as accurate. So the bottom line is that I return the stones that were fake. They actually came up as glass and other derivatives. So if you are into buying Gemstones I highly recommend this app. I was hoping it could tell me which grade it was like for example “AAA “ grade but I guess that will come in an update or its here and I have yet to discover it. Very interesting app which tells you everything there is to know about your stones.

I tried the free trial even though I wasn't expecting to HAVE to subscribe, which you do. If I have to pay for something like this I expect it to be accurate and specific, but it was misidentifying the rocks I tested with. For example, a serpentine stone I have that is chartreuse and white was identified as forsterite and other transluscent minerals, even when I tried taking a picture on a background that would clearly show its opacity. It also guessed that an agate was jasper. I was hoping it would tell me what type of agate it was but it guessed that wrong too (I know it isn't a carnelian).

This app could still be useful if you want to identify minerals and are prepared to do some research on your own to narrow it down, or if you don't mind some inaccuracy I suppose. But then, would it be worth the paid subscription? That's up to you.

i’ve been trying to get into witchcraft lately and i’ve loved finding out the healing properties of different stones. i have some red agate, but i couldn’t find it on the app. i have realized some of my stones were on the app, but didn’t have the tab of “healing properties”. (the stones are garnet and tiger’s eye) i’m not sure if this just means they don’t have healing properties, or if the app just doesn’t have the info. i’ve tried to test the app and see if it would pick up the stones as what they actually are, but it was incorrect. my stones are really tiny, like grains of rice, so it might just be the size. other than that, i collect rocks and it’s great to know what they are and if they have any healing properties.

however, i do have a suggestion. i cleanse my crystals with moon/sun water and it would be great to know if my newer crystals can be in water or not.

Great idea, can it work? Without scale it thinks my fist sized quartz is a diamond, woo hoo I’m rich! When in doubt a lot of things it just calls jasper. It knows rare minerals and then calls common minerals them, which is pretty dumb. A typical calcite crystal is phenacite, or typical green balls of prehnite are plumbogummite. It got some fluorite and kyanite correct. A polished soft pink calcite like you’d find in new age shops it said was red quartz. A typical polished selenite it said was cat’s eye glass, what? The first demo photo listed healing properties which many people would want, but all following ids were hardcore mineralogy only. I assume this is just some AI hooked up to a mineral database, but it’s not made for pop culture and without user training it can’t learn. Hopefully real mineral lovers are behind this to keep trying to improve the app, good luck!

Was really liking this app and the scientific explanations and descriptions of how rocks form, how to identify, etc. Seemed really cool.

Then I stumbled on descriptions of healing crystals/rocks. Wut? For example, obsidian = “Obsidian is considered a protection stone, that shields against negativity with truth-enhancing properties. It is said to bring clarity to the mind, drawing out mental stress and tension that sometimes leads to confusion. You can carry it with you to help ward off negative forces or keep the stone in your home, office, or anyplace you need protective energy.”

Are you kidding? I refuse to support this pseudoscientific nonsense and nobody else should either. Unless a rock/mineral has shown scientific evidence for health properties (like those minerals in many coenzymes and vitamins), we shouldn’t be spreading “healing crystal” nonsense. Very disappointing.

UPDATE- worst ! they charged my 33$ and i cancelled BEFORE my 1 week free trial! and this app is totally inaccurate ! tried at least 12 easily identified stones i knew for fact 90% wrong! *** wish i could contact company and get my money back ! totally unfair

The description of this app was exactly what I was looking, hoping for. Simple, easy to navigate, a few minor frustrations with the app set up however the most frustrating thing is how inaccurate the results are. I probably tried 20 stones that I knew for certain what the were. maybe one or two were accurate. they gave a different result every time i snapped a pic of the same stone. The worst part of this app is it offers a one week free trial but charged my card $33 before my week was up. Because of how inaccurate it is I don’t know if Id keep this app even if it was free but for $30 absolutely ridiculous I would not recommend this app to anyone

I’ve downloaded and used nearly ever app available on google and apple trying to find something that works this well and accurate. Do all my rocks get properly identified…no,however, I’m also not a geologist so maybe there’s a few I’m wrong about. This app gives multiple choices to run through and info about those choices. I’ve not used another app that’s as accurate or pristine. My only issue with this app is the astronomical price combined with no feed to speak to others about what you have or help identifying in a way that a computer can’t pick up. I know I will be canceling my membership shortly because I can be paying this much for a visual collects and identification to only use a few times a month but that app it’s self is total great. I think 12$ a month would be pushing it but that’s the most I’d be willing to pay month to month. Try this app for at least a month if you are a rock hound or trying to boost your knowledge. It’s pretty good and easy to use.

I’ve scanned 28k stones in the year I’ve used it and the accuracy remains at 85%. I know almost every mineral so this doesn’t affect my overall review personally, but it may cause trouble with inexperienced collectors. To mislabel a toxic stone as an entirely different mineral can allow people feel comfortable enough to touch with no protection or gift it not knowing it’s potentially filled with heavy metals, radioactivity, arsenic, etc. Which brings me to my next observation, minerals that are a “potential match” should have a warning regardless if the main match is non-toxic or not. Being in the same visual group is risky enough for beginners. The update doesn’t allow already logged minerals to have a label option so there’s that too. Extremely unhappy about that as a subscriber. The app tends to slow down and freeze more as your collection grows so it can be frustrating in the field waiting for my catalog to load in 100°F Overall, I’d still recommend it over other identifiers in the App Store.

An OBVIOUS, very very obvious amethyst rock crystal was tried over and over. I got... Lepidolite, Fluorite, Lilac Amethyst, Citrine Quartz, another Lepidolite, on very good quality photos in perfect lighting. Do not waste your time on this app as there are other things wrong as the overpricing for the guessing of many of the wrong rocks. And you cannot save the novels of reading of information about your crystal you don’t have time for or would like to save to read the novel of information later. Waste of my time I don’t even want the rest of my 6 1/2 free days. Thought I would be subscribing and telling all of my friends to get this app while posting it on all social media I could how amazing the app is. Waste of time and please don’t waste your money.
Rock Identifier owners, learn what Amethyst is.. one of the most known and used crystals under clear quartz. And get rid of that strictness level especially for $30. Unsubscribing sadly now, do not waste your time there are better ways. Describing rock online is better than this app

WIP. Could use more database, sort & search features; photo editing after the fact; and ability to export and create specimen labels.
But identifying minerals is very easy & fairly accurate. I’d say near perfect accuracy on simple obvious specimens like various forms of quartz, agates, jaspers, gypsums, calcites, micas and common rocks like granites, gneisses & schists.
However on fairly obvious minerals accuracy drops to 80-90%. It does gives 3 top choices/guesses & several photos to compare with easy access to standard ID characteristics for further refining/reference. I’d say 80+% of time right answer is 1 of the 3 choices given.
But 10+% of my specimens come up very wrong & even though it offers a way to correct it & enter your own ID, if it isn’t in it’s database it rejects your correction!
So bottom line, it’s great tool for beginners to ID & learn more about common rocks & minerals. It’s a handy quick start to whittle down choices for more advanced collectors. But a serious mineral collector will find current version of this app a bit limited in both Identification and collection mgmt.
Having said that, it’s still best app I’ve found by far!

So I’m confused with this app. I’m a geologist so I decided to try this app out to see how it measured up.
My son had a small piece of flint (or chert) so I snapped a picture, and the result came up as jasper... understandable the coloring resembled jasper but still wrong. So when I was prompted to give feedback on the specific mineral I indicated that the result was wrong and I knew it to be wrong. Well... as soon the the rock hit my inventory it magically said CHERT! I was so impressed (but confused because I clearly saw it categorized as jasper). I decided to delete the sample and try again. Well once again, it came up as jasper... so I exited out to my inventory and sadly it still was labeled jasper. What happened here? I don’t see a place to rate the result now, I was not prompted to give feedback after the image was taken like I was the first time. This app obviously has promise but I wish there was an easy way to rate or give feedback on the results given (like in my plant identification apps).
I love the fact that somebody tried to do this, identifying rocks is nearly impossible just by looking at them. I’d love to see some changes but overall I’m impressed that someone tried

I have this company’s plant app, which is amazing, so I have high hopes that this will eventually gets to where it need to be but so far Rock ID leaves a bit to be desired.

The results so far have been pretty iffy. Probably gets it right about 60% of the time but I e had to adjust a few times for stones that look very similar. Some it could not even find.

I think crystals in general are tougher than plants because they don’t have as many unique identifiers. And with phone photos two pinks stones are gonna look like rose quartz.

I’m using this more to keep track of my collection than I’d unknown stones because wit just hasn’t been reliable enough for the more obscure stones or colors / shapes.

Also recently the app has been changing the color of my stones as I take a picture? The nice background free edit the app does automatically also adjusts the color to match the stones typical coloration but that’s not the stone I have. It turned my teal adventurine tower into a typical green color. I don’t want that and would love for this creature to be optional. I guess it’s assuming the photos are bad / incorrect but that’s not always the case.

Anyway - hoping this iMovies with time and more data input

I’m a native of the Big Sky State of Montana. And with our world in the process of changing comes natural disasters, unfortunately. In our final months of summer the heat index was high enough to cause severe flooding across much of our upper elevations. And in my line of business,an experienced Concrete Construction Contractor for over 30 years has made me somewhat of a “Rock Hound” and definitely an avid Gemstone and Raw mineral stones collector. Very confident in my skill set to recognize Precious Raw Stones your “Rock Identifier App” is very accurate and has made my hobby more enjoyable knowing I have a very valuable collection. Not only did it correct a very crucial error or should I say mis-evaluation on a stone I thought was some kind of a Clear Quartz or Sea Glass turned out to be a 153.7 carat Raw Diamond that had been washed out of its original resting place, thousands of years before it was actually pushed out by the natural forces of the Earth. After a few different opinions it’s estimated to be worth in the seven figures area which is life changing! I’m the biggest skeptic I know so for me to give this “Rock Identifier App” a HUGE shoutout it’s definitely worth it! #rawinthe406 #yellowstones

I’m a collector of crystals, so an app that allows you to simply photograph a stone & then identifies it for you is like a dream come true. While there is definitely room for improvement, it seems the developers of the app are well aware of this, encouraging the user to participate in this process, which I appreciate. I’d love to see a few things, such as: 1) the ability to print out ones rock /crystal collection, (ie I have 70 stones in my collection in the app, so a visual color chart that allows one to include your original photos and the name & main properties of each rock) I think would be super exciting, instead of just downloading other people’s charts of “the most important stones” since this is ultimately subjective and could be very creative. 2) the ability to add text to one’s personal collection. For instance, if I could, I’d write my own metaphysical associations and/or properties of the stones, & how I use the stone in my own life/work. While there is currently a plethora of source material in this realm, to combine the ability to identify & create one’s own personal, experiential source material via photograph and then recorded uses, metaphysical properties etc. would make this app an essential tool in one’s own process of discovery and learning.

I 100% ADORE the app and think that is wonderful. The only option I am getting for a premium subscription is the annual plan. The app to store it shows that there is a monthly plan available. I plan to upgrade to the annual plan, for the moment a monthly plan fits a better with my dwindling disposal income this month. I’d love to be able to access all of the premium features for a monthly rate until I can upgrade to the annual plan in a few weeks. I have gone to faq/help in the app, on your website, and pretty much tried every way under the sun (I know slightly dramatic, lol) yet I can’t find a way to access that option. Have I missed something somewhere? Could the app developer please point me in the right direction? I’d super appreciate it As I have already gone a bit long with this review, I won't go into a lot of detail, but I highly recommend this app. I have tried about five rock/gem/crystal Identifiers so far & this one is hands down the most accurate, informative & the UI is far less confusing. I have been totally impressed!

Update (5 mins later)
So my brain kicked in & I went to the expired trial in my subscriptions & went to view all plans. My apologies for making those that read this suffer through my confusion above. I still wanted to leave the praise, but pressed for time at the moment, I’m not able to edit out my subscription location struggle. Thanks for the app!

An iPhone just cannot work as a magical (Star Trek-like) Tricorder. I tried 4 basic common rocks from Michigan and Wisconsin. The app mistook the first dolostone sample for quartz something and the fossiliferous dolostone sample for rhyolite! The third dolomite was crystalline dolostone, and the app called it Quartz (mineral), not even a rock. HALF of the Midwestern US is dolomite, yet the app missed all 3 dolostones/dolomites put in front of it.

The only rock that was close was my amygdaloidal basalt, which it called basalt (still incomplete) and amygdaloidal basalt wasn't even in the database , despite being VERY common in some regions.

I tried others too. The app called a chlorite-magnetite schist a basalt. I tried an obvious pyrite in a slate (single crystal). The app got pyrite, but it missed the "slate" part, which was the majority of the sample.
While my 1 pound piece of copper was called malachite, there was barely any green on it. It's 99.99% native copper. I tried my 1 pound shiny Mohawkite specimen, and the app said "pyrite".

There isnt even a single chemical element that overlaps in most of these results!

Sorry folks, but this app isn't ready, and I don't know how any phone app could substitute for a human's judgement and experience in this context. Even if it were free I would not recommend this. It was 1 for 10 at best with my common, obvious rock and mineral samples.

Ironically this Rock, crystal and gem app has done more for me than identifying the samples of rocks I have collected on my few outings as I am somewhat limited in my abilities to move around and with the past few years of isolation it has brought me great joy, feelings of great discovery and closeness with the beauty of the world not so far from our souls as we think. The immense joy knowing by going outside and breathing fresh air and looking down I picked up what I thought was gravel was actually Quartz. We don’t pay attention to the beauty that surrounds us.

However, the excitement and pure felt joy I receive in return for using this app to identify my samples is mysteriously heart felt. Exactly what some of these stones are meant for that I have discovered hidden beneath dirt piles and old brick under the hot desert sun or on the Beaches of the northern Pacific coast.

I have checked my results using stones already identified and labeled. On occasion I have gotten multi answers but believe that to be do to the rock being a combination of multitude of gems together and no fault of the app itself. This by far is the simplest and most useful in totality of apps like this which are available.

I am NEW to trying to identify my collection of what I have gathered due to its beauty or aura that it released which attracted me to it. . There is much still to discover about the world which we occupy and truths to be learned. Keep an open heart and mind. Be Kind to yourself and others.
Be forgiving of your own faults and those of others for this is how we learn, mature and evolve into higher spiritual beings as we discover our own path in life it allows for a deeper meaning to what is discovered. We all come from a beautiful place without memories on how to dissolve conflict so have patience and be accepting open and aware of your feelings using your innate senses.
Best to you on your discovery of self and our World. We are all one of a kind- Humans

Update, while it works OK, it was wrong quite a few times. Which is to be expected. You can’t identify every rock from a single amateur picture. Overall, I was satisfied with its accuracy, as a beginner of course.

Overall, I will NOT allow my subscription to continue past the free trial. Truth is, if it were $30 purchase price, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Not even thinking about it. And they’d have my $30. But to want to charge $30 ANNUALLY, that’s ridiculous. I can’t do it. So now they will get $0 from me. I’ll just invest in a couple books off Amazon. And they can have more of my money. It’s a shame, this app is really cool, but not for a subscription.

Apps like these, you should be able to purchase. And as the apps gets better, you benefit from purchasing early at a lower rate. Heck, I’d pay $40, maybe even $50 to purchase it. But I won’t do a annual subscription. Oh, and it would lock up on me frequently. Where I would have to go back and then start again. Not a big deal. And if I would have bought it, I wouldn’t have cared. I would have just hoped they fixed it sometime in the future. But for $30 a year...not a chance. Haha. If you want that much money from me, it better be seamless, accurate, and plentiful. Also, add a search bar! The minerals that were misidentified, I knew what they were. I just wanted info on them. But you can’t “add” a mineral to your little page. If I could have typed it in, and added it to my list, it would have been nice. But again, for $30 yes. For $30 a year. Absolutely no.

For now, I downloaded a reverse image search app for free, when I’m on the go, and it pretty well does the same thing.

If you ever offer this for sale, let me know. Until then, we will use analog rock identifiers (books).

We picked up a tumbler from a garage sale and bought some stones from the little lapidary store. It’s identified the common stones for us, and gives us some information on it, like hardness, and whatnot. So far I’m happy with it. But I’m new to rocks, so it’s not too hard to impress me. I’d say a 5-6 on Mohs scale. Ha!

I have my bachelors and masters of science in geology, a decade of experience in the field, and five years of teaching experience at the university level. And I am LIVID that anyone would have the lack of integrity to make an app that promises to identify rocks and minerals visually and charge even a cent for it, let alone $30/year. Let me explain to you why.

As a geologist I must tell everyone what I have told any friend who suggests that someone create an app that identifies rocks. It cannot be done! Rocks and minerals are almost never only identified visually. This is the FIRST lesson I teach my students in our rocks and minerals class.

There are a number of tests that even a seasoned geologist must perform to positively identify what they are looking at.

Density (which for those with experience can be done relatively just by picking up the rock or mineral)

Streak tests (which can be done on any unglazed piece of white ceramic)

Hardness tests (which can be done using a variety of materials)

Smell and/or taste (but please DON’T just put any rock you find in your mouth as a small number contain poisonous chemicals)

Reaction to acid (for distinguishing between a small set of carbonate minerals and the rocks they compose)

And there are more tests depending on what we learn from our initial observations.

Even then, there are some rocks that cannot be identified without cutting them into a thin section and looking at them under a specialized microscope.

Also, when rocks and minerals are polished, they also lose qualities that help with the visual aspects of identification. We often break rocks open to get a better idea of what we are looking at.

What can you do to identify the treasures of your rock hounding exploits instead of paying $30 a year for a scam?

Find a book on mineral and rock identification and follow the steps it gives you. If you want something portable, find an e-book (purchase or rent for free from your public library).

Watch videos online to learn how to do the simple tests required for mineral and rock identification.

If you are really into this, take a basic geology class at your local community college.

If you get stuck and really want to know what you are looking at, BRING the rock or mineral to a nearby college or university with a geology department, and I’m certain the resident geologist will be happy to help you with a few identifications. Try your best to remember where you picked the specimen up and that will help them, too. Do not just take pictures and send them to the geologist. Believe me. They will tell you the same thing.

Shame on the creators of this app.

I have recently been left a large amount of rocks that I decided I would like to find out more about. I signed up for the free trial and tried it a couple of times but was very disappointed as neither were correct. I was then distracted by the loss of the person who left them to me. When my bank statement was available I was horrified to see that £28.49 had been taken from my account. Firstly I thought it would be monthly, and secondly it wouldnt be so bad it the app worked. Being disabled and having a disabled daughter with the cost of living crisis, I cannot afford to lose this amount of money.

Did this identify the one rock I was trying to ID? Yes But was the supposed free 7 day trial actually free? No 0 stars for financial deception.

Update: Robot response makes it clear that this dev doesn’t really care if their app takes your money and doesn’t seem to want to resolve it.

I know there’s something to be said about paying for an app, but I cannot afford to subscribe to every individual app like this. The ad wall after every single action makes this app impossible to use without paying and therefore is not worth your time if you are part of the working class.

As soon as you open the app it makes you buy a subscription and makes it super easy to accidentally sign up by accidentally clicking home (which i did). Fortunately its a free trial so i was able to cancel and try it. It misidentified several if my stones but gets the basic ones everyone already knows.

I tested this app with a crystal I already know the name of and it got it wrong. So I tried another one I knew, just to check, and then another one, and another one. They were all wrong. I wouldn’t trust this app. It called my bloodstone a clear quartz and my rose quartz a sun stone and so on. I mean come on.

I paid for this up and I guess that’s wrong all the time why cannot single it down to one crystal stone or rock? I don’t like that it goes options and that paid for this it should be more legit very not figure out if you need definite answers. And I’m running a business that depends on this! Hands-down thumbs down

This app is a joke. If you don’t believe try scanning anything but a rock like your hand, a peanut, even a Volvo logo and even my bed covers lol it always comes back as it’s some sort of rock! Ahah Also super extremely inaccurate when taking pictures of actually rocks. Everything is most quartz lol even my Diamond… waste of time.

I just got a rock tumbler and found this app and thought it may be fun to use with my new tumbling hobby. I had a few raw rocks on hand I’ve found that I know exactly what they are, so I decided to try the app out and see what info it could give me on the rocks I have. It identified all of the rocks COMPLETELY WRONG. I deleted it immediately.

If your going to charge for such services you have to put in a more comprehensive system so it could actually identify what a collector cannot and not just be able to accurately identify stones a collector could easily identify themselves. Worse the app will mislabel a majority of what is scanned and label every other hard to identify rock as a Quartz, the biggest irritation and disappointment.

Downloaded the app so that my son and I could identify several rocks and minerals that my father collected in his travels. When I tried to snap a picture of some schist to try the app out, absolutely nothing happened. No photo was taken, no identification ensued, and there seems to be no way to get it to do so. My son is now in another room, playing with Legos, unbitten by the geology bug. Womp.

I feel this application should be one time purchase to use for the rest of your life through your Apple ID. I don’t think people should have to continuously pay for this type of application. Identifying a rock using a camera is a very simple task and I don’t think that it’s worth charging people yearly for even. I feel if not a one time payment, the application should be free for the public to use.

This app is okay, the identification helps to keep track of a collection, but it’s not always accurate. The biggest issue I have is the amount of ads for the free version. Anytime you click anything in the app there is an add. Want to use the camera? Ad. Want to save a stone? Ad. Want to read about a stone you have saved? Ad. It’s really annoying and the ads have increased the longer I’ve had the ap.

I installed this app after searching for a way to identify some of my collection of rocks and crystals. This app was so off, it couldn’t identify amethyst correctly. Then I saw the email that even though there is supposed to be a free trial period, they charge you for an annual subscription immediately! Now the only cancellation I can do is just cancel the auto renewal! Don’t install unless you have $32.99 to waste.

Not a good app. You don’t have to be a seasoned rockhound to recognize this app doesn’t actually identify the majority of minerals and crystals. It appears to be programmed to predict your rocks identification based on the rock’s color/s in the photograph. The database is also very limited. Nine out of ten of known rocks were misidentified when I tested the app. All photos were clear and detailed. I even tested the same stone from different angles.

If u don’t pay the premium the ads make you want to off yourself. They place themselves so that u accidentally hit them, like right over the camera button right before u shoot. And then after u flick the dumb add away and go back to the app it asks you to pay premium if u want to see the result. Nahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh thanks

I once took shots of 15 different rocks that I knew what they all were and the app got 8 of them correct. So about half. It’s ok but not great.

Nowhere in the description is this app called “rock identifier premium” it never mentions a yearly subscription for “rock identifier” but after you download the app it is more or less unusable until you upgrade to “premium” and after the 7 day trail it is automatically upgraded and you are charged.
The only way to not be charged is to cancel the subscription through iTunes, which no longer exists, and the app does not show up in the subscription page on my app story profile.
What a misleading way to extort money from people who want to identify rocks.

Maybe this works well if you’ve purchased tumbled stones or mineral chunks. It’s not useful for identifying rocks dug up in the backyard,no matter how clean they are or how good the lighting is. Anything with stripes came back as tigers eye or gneiss, even when they are obviously neither. A LOT of things came back as quartz, some of which are quartz, but most of which don’t look anything like quartz.
I realize a lot of random rock finds are conglomerates or other mixes that aren’t simple to ID, but I wish it would say that instead of returning a random, inaccurate answer.

So far this app has falsely identified everything I gave it. The camera doesn’t even work actually, you press the button and nothing happens. So I had to take a photo and upload. So far 90% of the results are quarts or something similar. Even when given agate or petrified wood. So not sure if there is any actual ai at play or if they just launched the app without training any models, but results do not even show color in similarity. Maybe they are allowing people to tag any photo as any rock without validation dnd it’s destroyed their models but this app is not worth anything above free atm