Geocaching® Reviews

by Lupu60

We’ve been this app for several years and love it. Geocaching has worked well over that time...until the “improvement “ last fall. It is now extremely difficult to navigate to the cache. For one thing it’s not possible to zoom in very far; the image just pops back out again. But even worse, the compass almost never points towards the cache! (This is not a problem with our compasses as they work perfectly in other applications.) The older version with the direction along the bottom with the mark showing the direction of travel actually got you going in the right direction. The compass now points in seemingly random directions. Now because we can’t depend on our compass, we have to use the number of feet away and maintain the direction where the number falls. We also have never had to depend on the hint as much as we do now. All this is extremely frustrating.

by Jazzylei

I used to have the geocache classic app on my phone. That’s how I started this app and got pretty into it. It was fun and easy and got me to exercise outside. I haven’t had much of a chance to use spare time and walk around so I decided to start back up. First thing I found was that my old app didn’t work and I never got so much as an email telling me geocache was switching to a new system. So I downloaded the new app cause I was excited to start doing it again. Now I can’t access any geocaches hardly at all. Not even ones I’ve found in the past. There’s no way I would pay for a basic gps system to find things. Instead of getting people outside and making them want to geocache. You people are making it impossible. I’m a college student I barely have time to get outside. Much less the money to pay for a basic app that doesn’t really do anything. Unless the subscription part goes away, consider me not a returning customer

by Ismilez

I started this app almost 10 years ago - hubby and I loved all aspects of it enough to fork over the $10 for the full app (pricey back then). But, then, Geocaching stopped working because groundspeak required more money from users. This seemed unfair, as half of the community were happily volunteering time and supplies to create the caches in the first place. Then, the subscription model of $5/month! To access data that is uploaded by others on caches that are maintained by others! And, that the majority of users only access a few times per year, and usually as a fun and leisurely activity with kids or friends! I spend less than half that for hardcore business and productivity apps that I use DAILY, like several times a day! Sadly, I left this app for several years because I was so turned off by this. I just came back as several people have asked me about it and I find that there still have been no major developments to justify this cost. Just basic design tweaks here and there. This is so disappointing, as this app is a fantastic activity that once brought people from all over the world together and relied on the volunteer efforts of placers and maintainers. It still has those aspects but is definitely tainted by greed somewhere in the mix. 😢

by Dorris45

I first optimistically downloaded Geocaching around a year ago. Finally! A quick, easy way to geocache without having to first figure out my route, add geocaches to my Garmin eTrek GPS by hand, and gather up a backpack full of supplies and a group of people for a long this app hike! However, I missed the part of the description where basic members (like me) could only see those few geocaches with a difficulty of 1.5 stars or less. I was severely disappointed. Not only was I unable to see any of the geocaches in my area, I couldn’t even see the caches I had placed! It took about 5 minutes for me to decide to return to the website permanently. I give Geocaching 2 stars because it at least has some potential as a new, easy version of the this app I know and love, but in its current state, it is virtually unusable for those unwilling to pay a Premium subscription. No matter how many features you add, how simple and intuitive you make the this app process, and how detailed you make the maps, this is a this app app, and a this app app without the geocaches is pointless.

by Roblarkins

Let’s be honest, the only thing Geocaching developers have to do is make a functional, intuitive app that stores and interacts with users’ data. Since the Geocaching authors don’t regularly create any content, there’s no justification for recurring charges that a one-time charge wouldn’t cover. While the interface works well enough, Geocaching is a serious battery killer. This alone makes the experience a bit miserable. I can go from 100% charge to absolutely drained in about an hour. This absolutely MUST be fixed before I’d even consider paying anything further. $6/mo or $30/yr just isn’t reasonable for an app that’s used only now and then. That kind of pricing demands a considerable amount more content and functionality than what we’re getting. But this app doesn’t need anything more than what we already had so there’s no need for such a relatively high subscription price. Please go back to a one-time fee or you’re going to lose a good percentage of the community.

by Wakisashi

The reason I use Geocaching is for messaging as no other app is allowed to do it, unfortunately. Even reading messages has bugs. Want to scroll? To bad! For some reason they decided to program to jump to the last message, so if you have someone that typed a couple messages and they are longer than the screen, you cannot read them. Have to use computer. Also, a huge annoying bug is that url links that I want to open in a browser get diverted to Geocaching , but Geocaching never opens the cache page. So all url links die. Would uninstall so I could open urls, but then I cannot reply to messages. Please fix Geocaching or let 3rd party developers integrate with messaging. Also give us the option to choose if Geocaching handles url links. I actually would rather it didn’t.

by Geezfools

I’m like many others before, a non-premium user who finds little use in Geocaching , currently. I paid for Geocaching many years ago and was annoyed when they phased it out for this current one. But like the time before there was an app, I will happily find geocaches without it as well. I’ve posted in other places that I would probably do an in-app purchase to unlock all non-premium caches, but I’m NOT interested in paying $30 a year for a membership I would use maybe 10-15 times. I geocache when I’m on vacation and in new areas, otherwise, not something I do. So for their to only be one paid option seems like a huge miss by groundspeak. But I think groundspeak must find joy in their ability to ruin their own game. Time and time again they’ve done things that just leave their users scratching their heads, Geocaching being one of them. Oh well, $30 I can spend elsewhere.

by JBlakeney

I stopped this app for about a year, simply because I hated the new version of Geocaching . The screens are difficult to navigate back and forth through, the satellite map is awful (please bring back Google maps), and I can't see the artwork on my souvenirs. One thing that would be helpful is if you could make the coordinates of a cache clickable that would allow you to open the coordinates in Google Maps and obtain driving directions. Sometimes caches are far apart, especially in rural areas, so driving from one to another is necessary. I don't like how I have to look at Geocaching 's map navigation while I'm driving to a cache location. If not clickable directly into Maps, at lease allow the user to copy and paste the coordinates. And the fact that you are forcing users to pay for premium membership in order to view even basic difficulty caches is just awful.

by Brw59

I am very disappointed with the structure of Geocaching … I bought the old one … the purpose of a one time buy is so I don’t have to subscribe … then the old app is discontinued, and prompts me to download this one, come to find out I can’t even see the geocaches that I already paid to see in the old app? That’s rotten… They should have ported over their old database for those that bought the other app. I only use it once every 6 months anyway … and today when I wanted to use it I found out that it’s been 12 months since I used it last.

… That being said, they did a good job with the user interface of Geocaching; but I’m still frustrated that they are ripping off so many people with something that is free for just using the browser with, the only difference being you need to copy the coordinates to put into a separate app to get where you want to go.

by Nate Maas

While Geocaching has an updated UI, I was saddened to see that they’ve now restricted all but the most entry level caches to those who pay for premium membership. We were quite active in the early days of this app, forming our own club and putting out a ton of local caches for people to find. We paid a pretty penny for all kinds of gear from Groundspeak. Then when they put out an iPhone app, we paid the $10 to support that too, to have something on hand to cache with newbies. Haven’t gone out in awhile, but took my brothers family out only to feel like we just got ripped off again by a money-grubbing company that we have put so much into. No thanks! We’ll go where the original spirit still lives on - we’ll try a few we’ve seen reviewed (Cachly seems like it has good reviews), just tired of being taken by the same people and are going to put a stop to it.

by IamJohnBamber

Geocaching has a lot of potential, but here are my main issues with it:

- A friends list you can edit and modify in Geocaching ; if this is such a great way to meet people, why do we have to go to a non-mobile-friendly website to try and add someone?

- Lists weren’t working from Geocaching , until I added one on the website. Weird.

- we should be able to see our finds in Geocaching

- sharing lists between friends - again, if this is such a great way to meet people why is this not there?

- slow to update when premium status is purchased - this should be instantaneous

- should be a flashlight on/off button easily within Geocaching

- tag friends in a cache you find, similar to tagging people on Facebook

- cover photo has to be set from website but not Geocaching ...??

- Geocaching should be able to do everything the website can do. I’m a new cacher and finding it unnecessarily complicated to go back and forth between a non-mobile-optimized website to an app lacking in functionality.

Update Geocaching with many or all of the features I’d asked for and I’ll give it 5 stars!

by Sweetwind

I have been using Geocaching for years (back in the day it would show a graphic of a dragon eating the satellites when it couldn’t get location data!) Overall Geocaching is good but at times prone to frustrating bugs. Currently I have a list of 160 caches across the world, Geocaching used to map it but now it just crashes whenever I try the map option for this list... that’s been happening for a month or two and I’ve finally decided to break the list up into smaller lists... I shouldn’t have to take steps like that to work around an app bug. Lists have been a problem in general for most of this year, Geocaching will freeze when downloading and some lists never manage to download at all. I will continue to use Geocaching because I haven’t found anything better.

by Free Star!

Went ahead and got premium because my fiancé and I were enjoying caching and I like the mental challenge of the multi caches and the gadget caches. My one complaint is that I can’t award favorite points in Geocaching . There’s an icon and it looks like you should be able to tap the heart but you can’t. I had to go to the website to award favorite points which was kind of a drag.

I think it would be helpful if when a trackable is in a cache it would pop up as an option to log when you Mark the “found it” option.

That way I wouldn’t have to search for it when someone else took the time to make sure it was marked as in that cache.

Otherwise, pretty good app. Some things could be organized a little better, and I agree about the being zoomed in to load the caches—kinda annoying. Especially if looking for a particular trait.

Please consider more challenges and things to check off as accomplishments. I’d love to see an interactive counties map where I try to find one in each county or state.

Also, I’d like a search feature for newly published caches that DONT have a FTF (first to find) yet.

Consider a Jargon terms section for muggles who just recently started caching! I scratched my head at the TFTF, TFTC, FTF, and especially P&G.

by Control_freek

I'm pretty happy with Geocaching . My primary lament from the previous version is the loss of being able to post directly to Facebook when I log a cache. I love the integration with the website, especially sharing lists. I can set up lists from Geocaching and then load them directly to my Garmin from the website on my PC. My wife loves being able to flip directly into Waze for navigation to a cache. I'm not one of those people who believe everything in life should magically be free. I can see where my $30 per year goes in app and website development, website and database management and hosting, event planning and execution (such as "Where in the World is Signal" and "Lost Treasure of Mary Hyde")... We do most of our caching from Geocaching on my iPad and actually find both the GPS locations and the satellite views to be very accurate.

by Nicheblon

Geocaching is amazing and did use it all the time! But there are a few things I think you should look into. Firstly, there is no way to edit a geocache desciption or add images one it has been created. This is a problem for me because there are certain things I hadn't mapped out about my cache that I really needed to add, and no matter what I did, nothing. Second, the fact that I have to may a 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑡ℎ𝑙𝑦 fee is terrible. I wouldn't make my consumers pay 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 to get access to all the geocaches on a 𝑔𝑒𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 app, no less, but if you're gonna make a payment, at least make it a one-time thing. This way more people will want to get the membership- because it's simpler, but also you will get more money this way. Everything is just less complex. The last thing isn't so bad, although sometimes it is a problem for me, not being able to "tag" someone else who helped you with the geocache. I think you should be able to link them as well.

So to recap, editing a cache, the subscription payment, and others. Please fix these and this could be a 5-star rating. But other than that, Geocaching is great!

by Crx81

As the title states, Geocaching isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to this app. In fact, I'll go as far as to say that the free app USED to be the worst thing that ever happened to this app. There was an influx of people who had zero investment in the game, who did more damage than the dreaded "muggles," having zero concern for returning things as found or for not getting muggled themselves. So Geocaching now basically requires paid membership, which is probably a good thing. Geocaching continues to improve and add more features, and I believe this will all end as a win-win for those of us that love the game!

by Skidlywinks

I think it is outrageous that anything above a two star or something mildly different from a standard cache is locked behind the premium subscription. I fell out of this app about the time Groundspeak made this call. I already paid into the $10 app way back when. I don’t have the funds nor do I want to be paying for subscriptions. I can go back to using the website and pulling up GPS calls on my phone. And as far as I can tell, I have no idea how to log or submit travel bugs on Geocaching any more. Maybe that’s locked behind a subscription too... Love this app, hate what they have done with it. TFTC... just not Geocaching .

by Buffylva

Geocaching isn't as bad as I first thought it was. It does now offer driving directions that link to navigation which is pretty decent. However the biggest thing for me is that I enjoyed viewing my souvenirs and on the last app you could pull them up read about them and view the artwork, with Geocaching you can't. Also with the last app you could track your trackables on the map and see where they have gone and which caches they have been placed in, once again that bothers me. Makes it difficult when I am out Caching and want to place a TB in a cache I have to pull up the website and figure it out from there, if they fix these two issues.....it would be a 5 star app.

by PT-OSIDE

I’ve been this app for about 7years and not only do it at home but I really like doing it while on our family vacations. We travel to some pretty great places China, Belize, Thailand, Cambodia, Alaska,Panama, etc. and today we are in Rarotonga in The Cook Islands. If it wasn't for this app some of the most amazing places on our journeys we would hv never otherwise seen. We’ve gotten 2 here so far and expect to do more together here as this dysfunctional family needs bonding times desperately! My point is driven home by the cache we will go get later today... we need to rget on SUP boards and paddle to this uninhabitable island about a half mile away where there is yet another cache and island I would have otherwise never stepped foot on!!
this app is the answer... ENJOY!!

by LocaBoriqua

2016: I am very new to all of this. Did my first cache with a friend Monday night and immediately loved it. Got the free app that night and went out on my own hunt Tuesday and very quickly paid the $30 for a years membership once I saw how many there were to find. Been caching every day (3days now) and have had no problem with Geocaching . Can't wait to find some trackables and some more swag. Will update once I've been using for a while.

Update: 2019
I have renewed my subscription every year because this is just so much fun. I don’t get to do as many anymore but it’s still worth it for me to have my subscription active when I am in a new place and want to find a quick (or not so quick) cache.