Help: selecting field guide data for downloading to mobile devices help

Gaia Guide supports use of field guide data offline by enabling users to select the data that they would like to download to their mobile devices for use in the field and away from their Internet connection.

View your own mobile data selections by clicking on the my field guides link in the site navigation menu. If you have not selected any field guides to use on your mobile devices then this will just present you with a warning that you have not selected any data for mobile use and it will guide you towards how to get started (bringing you back here!).

You can think of each field guide as a hierarchy of groups.  At the top of a hierarchy is one or more broad classifications, for example plants and animals. Under those broad classifications are increasingly specialised classifications, allowing field guide users to drill down from a broad group to the group that they have a specific interest in. As a mobile user, you are able to select any branch of a hierarchy within any field guide for download to your devices.

Do so by navigating through a field guide of interest to reach a group that you want to select. Once a field guide or group within a field guide is found, select it by clicking on the blue funnel icon in the navigation menu to make your selection. You will see that the blue funnel icon changes to have a red cross on it. That indicates that the selection has been made and stored. The funnel changes to have a red cross on it, showing that you have made a data selection. If you click the crossed funnel icon, it will undo your selection. The funnel icons, indicating whether a field guide has or has not been selected for download, are only included in the navigation menu when you are looking at a field guide or a description therein.

• The funnel icon to click when choosing data to download to your mobile devices
• The crossed funnel icon to click when deleting a data selection

If you are looking at a description but it is not in a field guide you will notice that there is no breadcrumb trail across the top of the screen showing you where the description fits into the currently selected field guide. This can happen, for example if you search for a species and that species is not included in your "current" field guide. To include it in a field guide, scroll to the bottom of the page and select which field guide you would like to make your "current" field guide. Then the description will be shown in the context of the selected "current" field guide. If that is not perfectly clear, you might like to explore more information  about how field guides and descriptions fit together.

Deselecting field guide data for downloading to mobile devices

If you want to quickly remove a number of field guide selections, you can do so on the my field guides page. Simply put a check in the box beside each of the field guides that you no longer wish to download to your mobile devices and save your changes. All field guides that were previously selected will disappear from the screen, indicating that they are no longer in the set of field guides that will download next time you request a data update from the apps on your mobile devices.