Shareable /models/ page: “Camera 0 facing back” still uses the front camera on phones; /train blocked on iPad and Android

[HKDSEbiology]

Who I am
Biology teacher at St. Stephen’s Girls’ College, Hong Kong. Students train an image model of living campus plants. On Open Day, guests should point a phone at a real plant and see the name. We are not trying to train on the phone — only to run the exported shareable model.

What works
Training and Export on a Windows computer in Chrome. TensorFlow.js → Upload (shareable link) succeeds. Example hosted model: https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com/models/Bm3QGooLE/

Bug 1 — Training site on tablets and phones
On iPad (Safari and Chrome) and on an Android phone, https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com/train shows:
“Sorry… Teachable Machine isn’t supported here :( Your browser or device doesn’t support Teachable Machine.”
Chrome on iPad does not help (it still uses WebKit). “Request Desktop Website” still fails.
This matches issue #172, still open years later. Schools that only have iPads cannot train.

Bug 2 — Shareable model page: back camera does not face the plant (new, more important for us)
We open the hosted model URL (not /train):
https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com/models/Bm3QGooLE/

The page loads on the phone. There is a camera picker:

• Camera 1, facing front
• Camera 0, facing back

Both previews show MY FACE. The option labelled “facing back” still uses the selfie camera. Guests cannot point the back of the phone at a potted plant in the normal way.

Expected
“Facing back” / Camera 0 should use facingMode: "environment" so the rear camera looks at the plant.

What we need as a school

1. On the hosted /models/ preview page, make “facing back” actually select the rear camera on iOS Safari and Android Chrome. A Switch camera button that enumerates devices would help.
2. Please do not block the /models/ share page on mobile the same way /train is blocked. Guests only need to run a model, not train.
3. Longer term: let students train on iPad (issue Project page not loading in Safari / Chrome on iPad #172), or document clearly that training is desktop-only and that the share link is the mobile path — and then make that share link’s rear camera work.

Thank you for keeping Teachable Machine free for classrooms.