Fern for iPhone
Houseplant care that adapts to your home.
One record per plant. One reminder a day. A watering interval that learns from how your plants actually dry out. And a species name from a single photo.
- Free to use
- No account
- Works offline
- Data stays on your phone
- iOS 26
The idea
Most plant apps nag. Fern listens.
A fixed "water every 7 days" reminder is wrong for half your plants and wrong for the whole house in winter. Fern works out an interval for each plant from its species, its light, its pot, and the season, then corrects itself every time you tell it the soil was still wet.
Features
Everything you need. Nothing that gets in the way.
An interval that learns
Each plant's schedule starts from its species and is adjusted for light, pot size, pot material, and the current season. Tap "Still wet" and Fern stretches the interval. Water early and it tightens. You can always see why it says eleven days, and change it.
One reminder a day, at most
A single morning digest lists what's due. Never a ping per plant. If you stop opening the app, the reminders taper off on their own instead of piling up.
Identify from a photo
Point the camera at a leaf or the whole plant. Fern returns the top matches with reference photos so you can compare, then sets up the care schedule for the species you pick. Picking manually is always an option.
Season-aware
Fern knows which hemisphere you're in and when your plants go dormant. Watering slows down and feeding pauses in winter, because December at the July rate is how most houseplants die.
A care table you can trust
Over 1,500 species, with hundreds reviewed against two independent horticultural references each. Care advice is not something an app should make up, so Fern doesn't. Toxicity to cats, dogs, and people is listed per plant.
A real logbook
Watered, fed, repotted, pruned, misted, notes, and photos, all backdatable. Every plant gets a timeline and a growth strip. Fertilising has its own track and pauses after a repot.
Rooms, grid or list
Group plants by room and browse them as a photo grid or a compact list. The plants that need attention today float to the top with one-tap logging.
Home and Lock Screen widgets
See which plants need water or feed today without opening the app. Tap through straight to the checklist.
Your data, portable
Export everything as JSON or CSV from Settings, and import it back. Fern keeps integrity-checked snapshots of your database and can restore one if anything ever goes wrong.
Privacy
Local first. No account. Ever.
Your plants, log, photos, rooms, and settings live only on your phone. There is no sign-in and no server that holds your plant data. The one thing that leaves your device is a photo you explicitly choose to identify, and Fern tells you exactly where it goes before the first one is sent.
Pricing
Free, with an honest upgrade.
Unlimited plants, reminders, widgets, the care table, and export are free. Photo identification costs real money per call, so the free tier includes ten identifications a month. A Fern Plus subscription for people who identify a lot of plants is planned for launch. Cancelling it never locks you out of your own log.
Details
Built for one phone.
| Platform | iPhone, iOS 26 or later |
|---|---|
| Storage | SQLite on device, included in your normal iCloud or computer backup |
| Identification | Kindwise Plant.id, via a small service run by the developer. Photos are not stored. |
| Sync | None by design. One phone, your data, your export. |
| Contact | support@cmdv.dev |