Tide Charts Reviews

This was a very simple and useful app for a long time until recently, when I started to receive a lot of annoying and unprofessional advertising on it. I don’t really mind ads in general, as I know they need to make money, but the way they are implementing advertising on TideCharts results in an unacceptable use experience. Two recent examples come to mind: (1) I received a survey invitation in TideCharts to weigh in on building the wall between the US and Mexico. The survey itself was strongly biased toward one particular point of view, and wasn’t really a scientific survey or poll intended to get true public sentiment, so I found it annoying to go through, knowing the results would not be used fairly. And (2) Today, I received an interstitial ad with uninitiated audio, which means that music started to play for an ad as I open TideCharts without any ability to control to stop it for a period of time. This is totally unacceptable advertising on any digital platform, except perhaps if you’re visiting a site or app where you expect uninitiated audio, like a movies review site/app. I am an expert in user experience, advertising online, and design, and I can tell you from years of experience and tons of data that this will make users extremely annoyed. It does not work as an effective form of advertising in the long run. Therefore, I am deleting TideCharts from my phone and seeking alternatives.

Great app, except that when you open it it sometimes plays video ads *with sound*, even when your phone is on silent. This is really intrusive, especially since I often check TideCharts in the morning when my partner is still asleep.

Practices like this actually make me less likely to subscribe/buy the pro version. I’ll just find another app.

To the developer: please consider removing the ads with sound. This is a terrible user experience. At a minimum ads like this need to respect the silent mode switch.

This has been a very useful tool when kayaking on my local river which has a strong tidal effect. It’s also nice to be able to check the state of the tides when planning an outing to the ocean. What i really hate about TideCharts is the advertising they push at you about every fourth time you open it. I get that it’s free, and i fully expect to be shilled to on a free bit of software, but the advertising is almost exclusively loud volume hyper conservative “financial planning” advice. During the abysmally embarrassing tRump years TideCharts bombarded you with loud bombastic ads like “do you love tRump more than jesus and are democrats satan” like ridiculously over the top survey type questions. I would just close out TideCharts and reopen it and the ad would be gone but the sudden Q-Anon conspiracy announcements could be embarrassing. Although clearly designed by extremists TideCharts uses publicly owned tidal stations to present very useful information to those of us who love the water.

I live on the coast and I use it all the time. But the user interface has a couple of “features” that the designers may have thought were clever or inventive but that are really just clunky and annoying.

As you slide the daily graph from side to side it snaps to a midnight-to-midnight position. Maybe someone likes it, but I don’t and I wish there was s setting to turn this off and just let me position it wherever I want. Related improvements would be to allow adjusting the scale by pinching and allowing rotating the screen into landscape.

Also, you can tap a spot on the graph and it will mark that point and label it with the time and tide height. But is very clumsy to move it. It should let you slide a cursor smoothly along the graph and display the time and height as you slide it.

I’ve been using TideCharts when I vacation on Cape Cod for morning swims. On the Apple Watch, it’s the best and most complete presentation of tides information I’ve found. It shows a simple graph of high and low tides, and shows tides well out into the future. The graphics on app on the iPhone are a bit clunky, more functional than pretty. Every year I look for a better tides app, but I haven’t found one yet. Pretty would get 5 stars from me. Unfair, maybe, but there’s room for improvement!

Just occurred to me I never reviewed the Tides app. It’s so good I just took it for granted. But just now I wanted to see tide charts for other areas, just opened the built in map and clicked. So intuitive, and accurate - having carefully watched our local tides perfectly match up with the predictions in TideCharts for a few years.

I love the hour by hour temp and wind direction and wind speed information, along with the tide chart info.
Would be helpful to know which of the nearby tide stations would provide the most accurate tide predictions and be the closest “model “ to the tide behavior at our location. Versus just the “ closest “ geographically as the crow flies.
And to more quickly see a map of the nearby tide reading stations.
Use TideCharts all the time .
Thank you!!!

I have to reconsider my low rating. I checked TideCharts again this morning and now the tide data is accurate. I don't know if this was a one time glitch or what. So for now TideCharts is working fine and is great for showing sun and moon data as well as tied data accurately and attractively. So disregard my initial review below for now.

I can't give TideCharts any credibility at all. It looks good on the surface but the tide data is wrong. It's nearly a full moon and the tides are close to 2.5 feet in Honolulu but TideCharts is showing them at 1.5 feet, and an hour earlier than every other source, including NOAA. In addition, I live right on the water and surf every day and am clued into the tidal heights and times myself. TideCharts gives fake news or, as the Russians used to call it, disinformatsia. So I used it for a day and realized it was really worthless.

Works amazing, but it’s especially amazing on Apple Watch (specifically the complication on the watch face) when used with the Time Travel feature -For those who don’t use Time Travel it’s the Apple Watch feature where you twist the dial and things like the weather and sunset times reflect the time you spin up to. Kind of hard to explain, but ask to see it in an Apple Store and then it’ll make sense)

I really like TideCharts. It presents tide data in two formats: graphical and list. The best feature is the graph presents high tide and low tide based upon degrees of departure from sea level. The graph also shows the phase the moon is in at present. Why is this important? The moon controls the tide cycles on earth. I collect seashells and how low the tide is going to be is important in deciding which beach to visit. I use TideCharts every day and highly recommend you download it.

I am new to TideCharts, I was using another but they no longer gave the actual high & low numbers just the times of each. Where we go to the beach it is critical to see just how high the tide numbers are due to the terrain. Anything over a 2 ft tide that beach is not accessible. So just seeing that the tide is low at 9 am isn't enough info. TideCharts is perfect for our daily venture to the beach with the pooch! Thanks for the great app.

I'm a long term user of a different tide app called TideApp. A bit ago their update took away a lot of functionality making it no better then a tide table. A new search for a better app lead me here.

So far so good. Accuracy is good and there are a bunch of other thinks like moon phase and local weather in TideCharts.

Although TideCharts lacks the ability to know the height of the tide at any time, (so I can know when its deep enough to put my boat in) not just at high and low, the graph is moveable to line up with the edge of the screen so you can figure it out.

Overall this has easily replaced my prior app for tides. Glad they are there. If they put in functionality of using you'd finger to move along the graph to see height at any time I would even go pro and pay $ to remove ads or whatever.

Wonderful, helpful app. Format and presentation of data is excellent! Clear, concise yet inclusive. Would give the fifth star if:
1. more locations on the OR coast we calculated, offered, displayed. There are similarities to using the 'old fashioned' paper tides book that mandated calculations performed by me. Exactly what I was trying to avoid.
2. Add sunrise, sunset, last light, first light times to the increased readings locations.
The data is accurate, helpful and hopefully saves lives.

Not only can you get the tides anywhere in graph or chart format TideCharts tracks your position so your cell phone becomes a mini Plotter that is great for a quick location reference on the run.
A multitude of pins give instant access to tide info in specific locations with one click.
Everything you nee more. Oh and this all works w/o cell tower connectivity & with cellular data turned off. True story..I used TideCharts from Blaine WA to Ketchikan, Alaska. Final destination Haines AK in upper Lynn Canal with Tides by my side.

The City of Petaluma Marina is decades behind on dredging. That may some day change. So they say.
Before I sail anywhere, I check the tides. I need at least 4’ of water. The tides are crystal clear. Graphics easy to understand. Touch the screen and get an instant time / height read out. Ebb- flow a cinch.
I don’t want to fight the river. So I can easily predict the best time to head into San Pablo or SF or Carquinez Straight.
TideCharts brings up the right chart for location. No computations necessary.

Me and my girlfriend were holed up under a bridge with the waves nearly high enough to reach us. We were saying our final goodbyes when I remembered I had TideCharts. I opened tides hastily, absorbing the data in TideCharts . I realized the tide was finally going out, and we were indeed going to survive. It was a bit awkward after because we started confessing things we never thought we’d say? I mean we did think we were gonna die. Anyways, easy 5 stars in my book 👍

Owning a boat I realized that I needed to know when would be a good time to get out there. I started looking at different apps, but nothing really popped out at me until I found this one! Tides is pretty sweet, not only does it sense the nearest bossy of water to you ( and tells u it’s water level) it also has the weather for your location!
What I love is that, say I needed to know if next Saturday would be a good sailing day, I can look that up and see!

Other then the Annoying adds Tides is a wonderful app that I strongly recommend.

Have used TideCharts for over a year now, both for our local beach in Kachemak Bay and when traveling by sailboat to Prince William Sound without internet. I’m impressed by the storehouse of tide data for what seems to me like obscure locales in many-faceted Prince William sound. I actually had more detailed tide data available with TideCharts than existed on an older Garmin chart plotter that was part of the Pilot house. I particularly like that you can ascertain the exact tide height at any moment, now or in the future, rather than just the highs, lows and their times for the day.

I so love TideCharts for many reasons. Living in Costa Rica you need to know the tide for everything. I first started using it for fishing. Then it was when I have the widest beach for full days of fun with my wolfpack and friends. Surfing, paddle boarding or building sand castles. Hunting for driftwood and other beach and river treasures, TideCharts reads where I’m at and gives me the skinny on when I should start getting to the tidal water.
Then the moon phases are excellent for cleansing my crystals, let alone prepping for full moon events. Knowing the moon phase is so important for planting or just howling at the moon.

I live in an area where the tidal range averages 8 feet. At certain times, you cannot go places by boat. TideCharts very accurately describes the the tides in such an easy to read format that takes all of the guesswork out of trip planning . It’s a must have for all boaters!
One feature I would like to see is the ability to choose the area to study, rather than just “nearest,” and maybe that’s a paid feature, but there have been times when I needed to know what the tide was at my house, but was closer to another body of water, so it only shows me that one, not my home.
Other than that, this is the very best tide charting app ever seen.

I walk daily on a beach that can be blocked at or near high tide where the cliffs stick out. I love TideCharts for the watch part of it. I put the widget on my watch face so I can see at a glance about where the tide is and if it is coming in or going out. On several occasions, however, the graphic in the widget gets stuck and doesn't move for days. I have to reboot my watch to reset it. The side to side scrolling on iPhone x is still a bit wonky too. Other than that, I love it!

Good App and good watch complications for being out in the water surfing, EXCEPT the third line of text on the center text watch complication is practically unreadable out in the sun and surf. Dark gray on a black background is impossible to see under bright outdoor conditions. The time of the tide change is the most important tide data and should be prominent. Please change the text to white like the rest of the text and I’ll give it 5 stars. Thanks!

I use this often to look at tide levels and times when I volunteer at Fort Sumter in Charleston SC harbor. I often get questions from visitors about tides and can show them with this very easy to understand graph. I also like it’s weather feature and the location option that allow me to see tidal levels in areas that I travel around the area.