About Little Finders Club
We make four little iPhone apps for curious families: Rockbud (rocks & crystals), Pipwing (birds), SproutScout (plants & trees), Buglet (bugs & spiders). Point the camera at something in nature, find out what it is, and learn something about it together.
Who makes the apps?
Little Finders Club is a family of apps made by Vision Forge Studios. Every app shares one engine and the same rules, so a family that knows one knows them all. Questions, ideas or corrections go to support@littlefindersclub.com, and a real person reads every message.
How does the identification work?
- Before the first scan, the app asks your permission to send photos to identify them. Without it, nothing is sent.
- The app sends your photo over an encrypted connection to our server, which asks Google's Gemini AI (the paid API) what it shows.
- The answer comes back with how sure it is, the closest look-alikes, and a tip or a quick test to check for yourself. Your photo isn't kept by us, and it isn't used by us or by Google to train AI.
AI can be wrong, especially from a blurry or partial photo. That's why every answer shows a confidence level and the look-alikes, and why our safety rules never depend on the answer being right.
What safety rules does every answer follow?
- Never eat wild plants, berries or mushrooms because of an answer. SproutScout never says a wild plant is safe to eat.
- Anything that can sting or bite gets "Don't touch, tell an adult", judged from the most dangerous look-alike. Buglet identifies bugs, not bites, and never tells you to kill one.
- Never lick, eat or heat an unknown rock or mineral. Some are toxic.
- Watch birds from a distance. Pipwing never suggests touching nests, eggs or wild birds, or playing calls to lure them.
- No medical advice. If someone is stung, bitten or has eaten something, the apps point to a doctor, Poison Control or a vet.
How do we write and check our guides?
Our guides answer the questions families ask most, in plain words a parent and a nine-year-old can share. Each guide lists the sources we checked it against, such as university extension services, government agencies and museums, and shows when it was published and last updated. We only change the date when we change the guide. If you spot a mistake, tell us and we'll fix it.
What about privacy?
No account, no ads and no tracking. The apps send only anonymous counts, like "the plans screen was opened", that aren't linked to you. Your finds, notes and map pins stay on your devices and in your own iCloud. Payments go through Apple, so we never see your name or card. Each app's privacy policy has the details: Rockbud, Pipwing, SproutScout, Buglet.