Most houseplants don’t die from neglect alone. They die because their owners had no idea what was actually wrong. Yellow leaves could mean overwatering, underwatering, too little light, or a nutrient deficiency. Without knowing which one, every fix is just a guess. That guessing cycle is exactly where plants lose.
Planted is a free iOS app that tries to break that cycle. Point your iPhone camera at any plant, and within seconds you get a species identification, a health score, a disease risk breakdown, and a concrete action plan. It’s the kind of tool that turns a worried plant owner into an informed one.
What makes it stand out from the crowd of basic plant identifier apps is the diagnosis layer. Knowing your plant is a Golden Pothos is one thing. Knowing it has a 14% risk of tip browning due to inconsistent humidity, and being told exactly how to fix it, is something else entirely.
What Planted Can Actually Do for Your Plants
Instant Species Identification
Snap a photo of any plant, leaf, or flower and the app identifies the species in seconds. Planted covers thousands of species, from common houseplants to outdoor trees and rare tropicals. The identification screen shows the scientific name, family, and a full care profile. No more squinting at blurry Google Image results.
AI Disease Diagnosis with a Confidence Score
This is where Planted genuinely earns its keep. The app’s diagnostic engine, listed as version 2.1, analyzes up to nine visual markers including leaf discolouration, stem firmness, root zone moisture, pest markers, and growth rate. It then returns a health score out of 100, broken into sub-scores for leaves, roots, and growth. A diagnosis comes with a confidence percentage, so you know how much weight to put on the result. One scan I reviewed showed a 92% confident diagnosis, based on visible markers, which is a level of transparency most apps skip entirely.
Personalized Care Plans and Reminders
After the diagnosis, Planted doesn’t just leave you with a problem. It hands you a numbered action plan: trim brown leaf tips with sterile scissors, adjust watering to every seven days, move the plant to bright indirect light, check soil compaction. Each recommendation is tied to the specific conditions of that plant, not a generic care sheet. You can then set custom reminders for watering, fertilizing, misting, repotting, and general maintenance so nothing slips through.
Plant Collection Tracking and Leaf Rewards
Planted lets you build a personal plant collection inside the app. Each plant gets its own profile, care history, and task list. As you complete care tasks, you earn Leaf rewards that can be used to access premium features. It’s a small touch, but it makes consistent plant care feel less like a chore and more like something you actually want to keep up with.
How Sofia Saved Her Fiddle Leaf Fig on a Sunday Morning
Sofia, a 29-year-old graphic designer in Austin, had been watching her fiddle leaf fig slowly deteriorate for about three weeks. By 9am on a Sunday, the lower leaves had gone yellow and one had developed dark spots near the edges. She’d already tried adjusting her watering schedule twice with no improvement.
She opened Planted, pointed her phone at the plant, and ran a full scan. The result came back in under ten seconds: the app identified the plant correctly as Ficus lyrata, gave it a health score of 71 out of 100, and flagged two likely issues: overwatering combined with inadequate drainage, and low ambient humidity. The diagnosis carried an 88% confidence rating based on seven visual markers, including leaf discolouration and root zone moisture indicators.
The action plan was clear. Let the soil dry out completely before the next watering. Move the plant away from the air conditioning vent. Add a pebble tray with water beneath the pot to raise humidity. Planted then set an automatic reminder to check the plant again in two weeks to track recovery.
Three weeks later, Sofia reported zero new yellow leaves and visible new growth at the top. She credited the specific diagnosis, not just being told to “water less,” as the thing that finally made the difference.
How a Planted Scan Actually Works
Step 1: Open the App and Scan
Open Planted and tap the scan button. Hold your iPhone camera over the plant, a specific leaf, or even the soil level. The app processes the image using its AI model in a matter of seconds.
Step 2: Review the Diagnosis
You’ll see the species name, a health score broken into sub-categories, and a disease risk section with percentage bars for each flagged condition. The confidence score and list of analyzed visual markers appear at the bottom of the screen.
Step 3: Follow the Action Plan
Scroll down for the full care plan. Specific steps are numbered and written in plain language. You can save the plant to your collection, set care reminders, and schedule a follow-up scan to track whether the plant is recovering.
Who Should Download Planted
If you’ve ever killed a plant and had no idea why, this app is worth trying. It works equally well for someone nursing a single succulent and for someone managing a full indoor garden. The free version covers basic identification and care info. Planted Premium, available on weekly, monthly, or yearly plans, adds unlimited scans and the full advanced diagnosis suite.
You can grab the app directly from the App Store: download Planted, the AI plant disease identifier app, and run your first scan for free. It takes about fifteen seconds to find out what your plant has been trying to tell you.
