Your smartphone is more than a communication device—it's a portable laboratory equipped with sensors that can measure air pressure, detect magnetic fields, track seismic activity, and capture environmental data with remarkable precision. What was once confined to professional research facilities now fits in your pocket, and millions of people worldwide are using this technology to advance scientific knowledge.
Citizen science transforms smartphone owners into active contributors to research. By donating data through dedicated apps, you can help scientists monitor biodiversity, track climate change, detect earthquakes, map light pollution, and much more. In an era of tightening research budgets, these crowdsourced observations fill critical gaps in global datasets and enable studies that would be impossible through traditional methods alone.
The apps listed below harness the sensors already built into modern smartphones—cameras, GPS, accelerometers, magnetometers, barometers, and microphones—to support open scientific research across disciplines. Whether you're interested in astronomy, ecology, geophysics, or environmental monitoring, there's a project where your smartphone can make a meaningful contribution.
Explore the categories below to find a citizen science app that matches your interests and turn your daily activities into scientific discovery.
U.S. mountain regions
Hikers photograph algal blooms in alpine lakes with the CitSci app, synchronising geo-tagged images to document bloom timing and distribution.
Central Europe
AmphiApp documents amphibian sightings, calls, and habitat conditions, combining photos, audio, and geolocation for conservation planning.
Global
BirdNET records ambient audio for AI-based bird identification, combining microphone data with location context to map species distributions.
Europe
BOB focuses on protected beetle species, asking participants to upload photos and locations to monitor behaviour and distribution.
Pilot regions
The CITISENS prototype estimates wildfire locations by combining camera images with motion and magnetometer data to determine device orientation before triangulating fire coordinates.
Global coastal regions
Coastal Observer users document local weather, water levels, and coastal change with geotagged photos to inform climate adaptation strategies.
Global CoastSnap network
Visitors take repeat photos from fixed CoastSnap stations or via the SPOTTERON app to document shoreline change over time.
European coasts, open globally
COSEA users report marine life, habitats, pollution, and human activities with georeferenced media to support coastal and marine science.
Global
Participants cover their phone camera and let the app detect cosmic-ray tracks, uploading events with timestamps and locations to the CREDO network.
Global
CrowdMag combines smartphone magnetometer and accelerometer readings to capture orientation-aware geomagnetic data during short 'magtivities'.
Global
CrowdWater users create virtual staff gauges with photos and revisit sites to compare current water levels, building a crowdsourced hydrological dataset.
Global
Dark Sky Meter uses the iPhone camera as a light sensor, capturing sky brightness readings that can be shared with light-pollution databases.
Global
Participants record dawn bird song soundscapes, optionally adding photos and metadata such as weather or noise levels, with integrated BirdNET AI analysis.
Pilot / educational
Users cover their phone camera to record dark frames; cosmic-ray hits leave bright pixel tracks that are logged with time and location metadata.
Global
Earthquake Network monitors accelerometer data while phones are idle and charging, issuing alerts when multiple nearby devices detect strong shaking.
Austria and neighbouring regions
The Dreckspotz app encourages users to geo-reference litter finds with photos, helping identify pollution hotspots and inform cleanup efforts.
Global
Globe at Night guides users through constellation comparisons via a mobile-friendly web form, recording location, date, and sky brightness estimates.
Global
NASA's GLOBE Observer turns smartphones into environmental sensors with dedicated tools for clouds, mosquito habitats, land cover, and tree height. Users capture photos, follow guided measurements, and submit observations to the global GLOBE database.
Global
iNaturalist enables users to photograph wildlife and upload observations enriched with automatic time and location data, aiding species identification through community review and AI.
Global
LastQuake delivers rapid earthquake alerts and gathers eyewitness reports, photos, and videos to assess shaking intensity in near real time.
Global
The app guides users through targeted star counts, using GPS and on-screen cues to evaluate how light pollution affects sky visibility.
Central Kalimantan, Indonesia
Mawas Guardians supports indigenous patrols in Central Kalimantan by tracking routes, logging incidents, and attaching photo evidence offline.
Global
Merlin Bird ID analyses live audio to suggest bird species, displaying real-time spectrograms and tailoring predictions to location when available.
Global
mPING users submit real-time precipitation reports, with the app automatically attaching location and timestamp for meteorological analysis.
Global
Developed by UC Berkeley, MyShake runs in the background to capture accelerometer data indicative of earthquakes and shares triggers with a global detection network.
Austria and Europe
Nature's Calendar collects phenology observations such as flowering, fruiting, and animal activity, capturing geolocated photos across Austria and Europe.
Global
NatureSpots is a SPOTTERON app where participants map animals, plants, fungi, and habitats with georeferenced photography.
Global
NoiseCapture is an open-source Android app that collects sound-level measurements tagged with GPS tracks, enabling collaborative noise mapping.
Historic project
NoiseTube transformed smartphones into mobile noise meters, recording sound levels and GPS tracks to assemble collaborative urban noise maps.
Europe
PartiCollect volunteers geolocate and photograph tree-bark samples that are later analysed for fine-particle pollution associated with traffic.
Discontinued
PressureNet automatically gathered barometric pressure readings from Android phones and paired them with GPS altitude to produce dense atmospheric datasets.
Project archived
The Record the Earth app captured up to three minutes of environmental audio, creating a global soundscape archive for research and education.
Global
Volunteers lower a homemade Secchi disk into the water and log the disappearance depth with GPS-tagged entries, optionally adding photographs.
Global
Participants photograph or report noctilucent clouds via the CitSci platform to help NASA and the Cloud Appreciation Society build a global map of these twilight phenomena.
Primarily Europe, open worldwide
SpiderSpotter collects geo-tagged spider and web observations, including photographs and descriptive metadata.
United Kingdom and Europe
Spot-a-Bee invites urban residents to photograph bee-friendly plants, recording sightings with geolocation and species guidance via the SPOTTERON platform.
Pilot regions in Europe
SpotFIRE engages citizens in recording vegetation fuel loads and wildfire events, compiling geolocated photos to inform forest-fire risk management.
Global
StreetComplete presents local OpenStreetMap quests, prompting users to answer simple questions on-site to improve mapping data quality.
Africa and global cities
UrbanBetter Cityzens links active travel with environmental monitoring, letting participants log exposures such as air quality, heat, and noise along their routes.
Global
WeatherCitizen supports manual snapshots and passive sensor sessions, logging weather observations with optional photos and external Bluetooth instruments.