Arabic field guide App – new iOS update

Our free Arabic App was launched in April 2018 and so far has been downloaded almost 6000 times. This is an encouraging start and working with the NatureGuides, the App designers, we’ve made some improvements which we hope will see us break the 10,000 downloads before the end of 2021. One regular comment we received from App users was the large file size, and we have been able to reduce this as part of the update.

You can download (for free) the latest version by visiting the OSME home-page and following the Arabic App links in the top right-hand corner.

Or download directly from the Apple Store and Google Store

Improvements to the iOS version include the following:

• App download size reduced by 40%
• Updated to support iOS 14 and the latest iPhones
• Redesigned species account screen
• New flag icon for showing a popup with species name in other languages
• New setting to change which languages appear in the flag icon popup
• A–Z icon replaced with a search icon; tapping brings up the keyboard automatically for quicker searching
  

OSME Chairman, Rob Sheldon, “The development of the Arabic field guide as a free to download App has been one of the most important projects of our 50-year history. We hope this App inspires people across the Middle East to enjoy and cherish the birds that reside in, and visit, this wonderful region.”

Fiona Barclay, Managing Director of NatureGuides, has led the App development from the outset: “I’m delighted that we have refreshed the app with some great improvements, and we hope that the inclusion of new languages for species names will encourage conservation in the region.”

AbdulRahman Al-Sirhan, the translator of the book: I am delighted to see the App has been updated to ISO 14, this makes it stay with us for another five years. The reduction of size and the addition of some features will surely increase its popularity in the region.

The App is based on the English text and illustrations for over 800 species from the Porter & Aspinall field guide to the Birds of the Middle East and was translated by AbdulRahman Al-Sirhan Alenezi.

Footnotes:

More details on the App can be found here, including acknowledgements to the many supporters who contributed to this fantastic project: https://osme.org/2019/01/the-arabic-app-of-birds-of-the-middle-east/

NatureGuides has also recently released a new version of Birds of the Western Palearctic as a BWP app which is available on iOS and Mac OS: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/bwp/id1451326170