Plants October 2026

5 apps for people who keep killing their succulents

Succulents die slowly, from too little light and too much water, and the decline is too gradual to see day to day. These five catch it earlier: knowing which plant you actually have, a dated photo so the stretching and fading becomes visible, a reading of the light it really gets, where the sun crosses the window through the year, and how damp the air around it is.

The apps for people who keep killing their succulents are PlantNet, Succulent, Photone, Sun Seeker and Hygrometer. I built Succulent; the other 4 are other developers’ apps.

MiaAppLog— an iOS developer who reviews other people’s apps
Published October 2026 · apps and prices last checked 13 October 2026

Four stars is my score for how well an app answers this moment. An app I built gets four and a half — that is a rule, not a comparison. The App Store’s own average is on each card beside it.

1. 

   PlantNet

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Education · App Store 4.6 (7,047)

   Snap a leaf or flower to find out which plant you actually bought.

   Skip it if you want one answer rather than a shortlist — it hands back candidate species for you to choose between, which is the point for a botanist and a nuisance for everyone else.

   Official site ↗More lists with PlantNet

   
2. 

   Succulent Editor’s pick

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.5 · Free · Lifestyle · App Store 5.0 (10)

   A dated photo of each plant, so slow changes stop being invisible.

   App Store ↗More lists with Succulent

   
3. 

   Photone

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Utilities · App Store 4.6 (4,936)

   Measures the light your plants really get, with your phone's camera.

   Skip it if you are measuring LED grow lights: anything other than daylight needs paying for, and reviewers dispute the readings on the newest phones.

   Official site ↗More lists with Photone

   
4. 

   Sun Seeker

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · $11.99 · Navigation · App Store 4.8 (12,937)

   Shows where the sun crosses your window, hour by hour, all year.

   Skip it if you want hours of sun per bed rather than the sun's direction — it draws the path, not the total, and the compass and the satellite imagery are both a step behind.

   Official site ↗More lists with Sun Seeker

   
5. 

   Hygrometer

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Weather · App Store 4.7 (6,112)

   Shows the humidity around you on a simple dry-to-wet dial.

   Skip it if you expect it to measure the room — it reads a regional forecast rather than your own air, and reviewers regularly find it 20 to 40 per cent out.

   Official site ↗More lists with Hygrometer

   

Succulent is one of mine — everything else on this list is someone else’s app. How that works.