Animals of Costa Rica 2.0: rebuilt from the ground up
Animals of Costa Rica 2.0 is live on Google Play and the App Store. It is the biggest update in the history of the app: we rebuilt it completely for current iPhones, iPads and Android phones and tablets.
Why a rebuild
The previous versions were built on Xamarin, a framework that has reached its end of life. Instead of patching the old app, we rebuilt it with .NET MAUI and moved the content to a new database. New species, photos and texts now reach the app as online content updates, so you no longer have to wait for an app update to see them.
New content
The catalogue now holds 7,026 species and 10,581 photos.
About 1,700 species have new descriptions in three parts: identification, habitat and behaviour, and where to find the species in Costa Rica. Every mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian and fish now has a description. The info pages of classes, orders and families have new introductions as well.
Places to visit is a new section with 20 lodges, research stations and national parks. Each place has photos, its address, map and web links, our own notes and the species of the region.
For 968 species the app shows the conservation status from the IUCN Red List, and you can filter by it. A link on each species page leads to its observations on iNaturalist.
More free species, clearer purchases
Many more species are free now, including the animals you are most likely to meet on a typical trip. They have their own “Free species” list.
Locked species show their names, the beginning of the description and the package that unlocks them. The purchase page lists what each package contains, and “Restore purchases” is on the start screen and on the purchase page, with the download progress shown.
Easier to use
- A layout for tablets and iPads with larger text and pictures
- Distribution maps in full width; tap to zoom and pan
- Tap the path above a list to jump back to any level
- Clearer lists, filters and settings, and better labels for screen readers
- Export and import your favourites and seen species
- An optional setting hides species that only have a placeholder picture
More reliable
Downloads retry and resume automatically, and they are smaller than before. The database is faster, and many crashes are fixed. Two follow-up releases, 2.0.1 and 2.0.2, fixed a crash when a download finished in the background, a crash on iPhone after returning to the start screen, and a crash when a download notification was tapped while a system screen was open.
Updating from version 1.x
Simply install the update. Your favourites, seen species, purchases and downloaded pictures are kept.
Version 2.0 needs Android 7.0 or newer, or iOS 15 or newer on iPhone and iPad.
Download it from Google Play or the App Store. If something does not work as expected, please tell us through the Support page. If you spot a species that is missing or wrongly described, the contact form is the right place.