The best mushroom identification apps you can use in the UK (top 3)
Just like with plants and trees, all types of mushrooms can be found here in the UK, and yet so few of us know anything about them. It's estimated that there are more than 15,000 different species of wild mushrooms in the UK, so it's a tall task to be able to identify every species.
But being able to identify mushrooms can be really useful, and it becomes especially important to accurately identify mushrooms if you're planning to consume them for health, as eating mushrooms which aren't edible could have serious consequences.
Luckily, there are lots of apps out there which will help you to accurately identify mushrooms. We've tried many of them and thought it would be useful to round up the best mushroom identification apps you can download in the UK for iOS and Android, let's get into it:
Picture Mushroom
Like many of the plant identification apps we looked at previously, the Picture Mushroom app makes identifying mushrooms really easy by having an AI camera feature. All you have to do is open up the app and point your camera at the mushroom, and you'll have an accurate identification within seconds. The app will ask you to take a photo of the top, bottom, and front of the mushroom, so you'll have to get pretty close to the mushroom if you want an accurate identification, but it's well worth the effort. The app won't just give you the name of the mushroom either - you'll get detailed information about where the mushroom typically grows, what characteristics it has, and more. It's a really impressive app and you get all of this information within the free version of the app, which we were impressed to find had very few adverts. The paid version of the app gives you a number of other features, with one of the really cool features being an offline version of the app. So even if you're in the middle of nowhere without any signal, you could still use Picture Mushroom to identify mushrooms if you have the premium version. Learn more and download the app here for Android and here for iOS.
Mushroom Identificator
Mushroom Identificator feels like a really basic app when you open it up, but once we used the app to try and identify some mushrooms, we were really impressed with the results. As with PictureMushroom, you can either take a photo of the mushroom within the app, or you can upload a photo of a mushroom which you've seen previously. That in itself is quite as useful as you might be out and about when you see a mushroom that you want to identify, but if you have no signal or don't have your phone with you then you could get someone else to take a photo and send it to you later to upload to the app. The Mushroom Identificator app will ask you if you want to add additional information about the mushroom such as where you found it, but this isn't necessary. After a few seconds, the app will give you a suggestion of what it thinks the mushroom is. Once you've confirmed that it's the mushroom which the app suggested, the app will also give you a bit of additional information about the mushroom. This wasn't as much as PictureMushroom, but it was still quite useful. For a mushroom identification app which is quick and easy to use, we think that Mushroom Identificator is a great option. Learn more and download the app here for Android and here for iOS.
Shroomify
Shroomify doesn't have a camera function or anything like that within the app, but it's still really useful for identifying mushrooms and in some ways, it's actually better for learning about mushrooms compared to the other apps we tried for this guide. You start by opening the app up and looking at a series of pictures of mushrooms. You click on the picture which looks most like the mushroom that you're trying to identify, and then you select the colour, the shape of the cap (top of the mushroom), and a few other features. The app will then give you a list of mushrooms which it thinks it could be based on the information you've selected, and you just select the one which looks the most like the mushroom that you're looking at. It's a very basic app, and it takes a little longer to use than the other apps we've included in this guide, but it's very good. The app also has a lot of information about which mushrooms are edible and which are poisonous, including photos of mushrooms which you can eat and which you can't which is really useful information to have if you're foraging. Learn more and download the app here for Android and here for iOS.
We hope this guide helps you to find a great mushroom identification app. Let us know if you've tried any of these or if you have any other apps like this that you think we should download and try! If you want to get the health benefits of mushrooms then we have a guide to the best mushroom coffee you can buy, as well as the best reishi supplements you can buy.
Finn H
Finn is the editor of You Well and has been writing about travel, health, and more for over 10 years.