About Cloud ID

Who makes this

Cloud ID is an AI cloud identifier for iPhone, published on this site at cloudidentifier.app. It is designed, built and maintained by a single independent developer — there is no company and no editorial team behind it.

That cuts both ways: decisions are made in one place, and any mistake on these pages is mine to fix. If you find something wrong, writing to me is the fastest way to get it corrected.

How the cloud guide is written

Every entry follows the classification of the World Meteorological Organization, which sorts all clouds into ten genera. The Latin genus and species names, the altitude bands, and the grouping into high, middle, low and vertical clouds all come from that standard.

The descriptions are written to be usable while you are actually looking at the sky: what separates one genus from another, which pairs are routinely confused, and which single observation settles it — the shadow test for cirrostratus against altostratus, the finger-width test for cirrocumulus against altocumulus.

Cloud names differ by language, and the guide follows each language’s own convention instead of translating word by word. German uses the established everyday name where one exists — Federwolke, Haufenwolke, Gewitterwolke — and the Latin genus where none does. French uses the Latin genus throughout, because that is what French speakers actually say.

About the AI identification

The app sends your photo to our server, where a vision model analyses it against the same WMO classification and returns three ranked candidates, each with a confidence score and the observations behind it.

The result is an estimate, not a determination. It is shown as three ranked possibilities rather than one answer precisely because clouds rarely match a textbook example — you should be able to judge the reasoning rather than take the output on trust. For any decision that matters, consult a meteorologist.

Contact

Questions, corrections and bug reports are all welcome.

[email protected]

Photo credits

The cloud photographs in the guide come from Wikimedia Commons and are used under the licences shown below.

• Cirrus — Sciencia58 / CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Cirrocumulus — Famartin / CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Cirrostratus — Bieverwin / CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Altocumulus — Famartin / CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Altostratus — Famartin / CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Nimbostratus — GerritR / CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Stratocumulus — W.carter / CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Stratus — Tracie Hall from Orange County, us / CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Cumulus — Uoaei1 / CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Cumulonimbus — Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE / CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons