BirdNET Live

BirdNET-Team

About this app

BirdNET Live runs our most sophisticated sound ID model directly on your device — no internet connection required.

Watch a live scrolling spectrogram, view species detections in real time, and manage your growing library of animal sounds right from your phone.

BirdNET Live supports bioacoustic research and structured acoustic surveys across multiple workflows:

- Live Mode — Real-time species detections with a live spectrogram
- Point Counts — Structured timed sessions with live detections
- Surveys — Record longer transects while tracking detections along your route
- File Analysis — Analyze audio files from local storage
- Batch Analysis — Process multiple audio files in bulk
- ARU Mode — Schedule longer acoustic recording deployments

BirdNET Live is designed for researchers and citizen scientists alike and offers extensive configuration and detection review options.

This app is a joint effort by the Cornell K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics and Chemnitz University of Technology, in partnership with the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.

Development of this app is supported by the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt.

For more information, consult our online user guide: https://birdnet-team.github.io/birdnet-live-app/user/

Ratings and reviews

I have been an ecologistbeen and have been waiting for something like this. Previously using the old BirdNET app, I would have to manually use it for bird calls wasn't sure of while doing surveys. While it was a great tool, having to switch between a device and my clip board while doing Flora surveys was clunky. Now I can use the point or survey options within the field. Good to play with the settings so you can get the most out of it. Yes, there are limitations, however it's a great free app.

I used the previous BirdNET app, but I prefer this version now. I especially like the fact that it's offline and I'm noticing a lot more since using the live detection instead of manual. I was pleasantly surprised when it detected a common field grasshopper as I thought it was only for birds. The settings are very customisable and overall it's a very well designed app. Most of the UI feels intuitive, but I recommend using the (?) button as there's extra info. I'll be recommending this to friends

Very nice alternative to the previous app - no more having to select an excerpt on the spectograph and hope there's a decent connection to their servers! The ability to record continuously over a walk and auto-ID each species it detects is a nice touch. Hopefully when the batch audio file analysis is rolled out, it can also pick up the accompanying metadata text files produced when Exporting Observations from the old app, so picking up date, time and location.

What’s new

Improves File Analysis and long-recording review, adds adaptive location filtering and shared-file imports, and makes audio analysis faster and more reliable across the app.