About Gleamite

Gleamite is a photo identification app for rocks, crystals and gemstones, and this site is its method written down: 3 identification pages and 28 field guides that work with a steel nail and a bottle of vinegar whether or not you ever install anything.

Why the site teaches the manual method

Because photo identification that cannot be checked is astrology with a camera. A model can rank what a stone probably is; only a hardness, streak or fizz test makes the answer yours. The app pairs every match with its confirming check, and these pages document the same checks in full — the identification chart is the app’s logic, printed.

That design also sets the site’s honesty bar. Pages here regularly conclude that a photo cannot settle your question — that a stone needs a lab, that most finds are quartz, that no app should price a gem. A product built on checkable answers cannot publish uncheckable ones.

How claims here are checked

Three rules do most of the work. Physical properties are taken from USGS materials and standard references, with sources and dates printed per page. Claims about other companies’ apps are read from their own store pages on a stated date and labeled as vendor claims — where we have not bench-tested something, the page says so. And search figures that decide which pages exist come from an Ahrefs measurement dated 2026-08-07; where a page targets an unmeasured phrase, it says that too.

The people behind the pages are on the editorial desk page, with the working rules spelled out. Questions and corrections go to [email protected] — a specific correction with a source beats a general opinion, and both are read.

What the app does and does not do

It identifies: ranked candidates from a photo, the properties behind each, the check that settles it, and a collection log. It does not appraise, certify or price stones — the value question has its own honest sequence, and the parts that need a gemological lab are named as such on the gem identifier page.

Every page here is written to stand on its own regardless: the checks are the method, and the method runs on a steel nail, an unglazed tile and a bottle of vinegar. That is deliberate — a guide you cannot verify is a guide you have to take on faith, which is the opposite of what identification is for.