Great overall app. Makes pre-fishing and trip planning incredibly easy. It's nice to have a plan and not go to the lake/river blind, or having to sit in my garage in my boat and plan on the graphs. I'm not impressed with the syncing with my head units. Updates and data transfer can be slow and buggy.
Reviews for Garmin ActiveCaptain®
← Back to Garmin ActiveCaptain®awful, I was hoping to move the map from my gps to my phone so I could look at it when ever and I guess you can not, it just wants you to spend 250 a year for a subscription, so you can add the data to the subscription?
Really disappointing. Flaky connection to plotter + extremely unreliable sync. No auto guidance with regular charts (send us more money and you can have upgraded charts that will allow auto guidance in the app). Turns out buying a plotter and charts with a 1-year-old boat doesn't mean you can register the charts to your account and use all features. Again, send us more money and you can buy new charts (that you already bought once). It's a racket to get people to pay for the same product twice.
Hopeless, all I want to do is download waypoints from my GPS. Appears to connect, then states not connected, completely flakey and non-functional. (I wouldn't be quite so pissed off if the microSD card slots worked, but they don't).
it's rubbish. takes hours to actually do anything. connection unstable. often can't even download the software updates. you need to do better garmin.... Lowrance are way ahead.
This apps integration into garmin Chart plotters is unbelievably unnecessarily Complicated, it is hardly user friendly and not even remotely intuitive. bluetooth won't connect. I have decided to delete it and update my unit via sd card moving forward. what a collasal waste of time
Since buying Navionics - which was a life purchase, Garmin have milked the navigation software they now have - despite using users to contribute to the updating of Navionics charts for free. I have already moved most of our boats to Onwa Products, which have active AISB and all FREE worldwide charts. Very Sad dealing with Garmin these days and it will affect all future purchase decisions.
I have used the app for many years. It was working fine but after I upgraded my phone to Google Pixel 8 Pro and the latest version of the app, downloading maps became a nightmare. The area I wanted to download requires selecting multiple times. However, latter downloads would make the previous areas disappear. If I delete the visible map, then the missing map would show up. Regardless which order I use to download, I couldn't finish the whole thing. Very frustrated.
The whole garmin experience is new to me.. my whole garmin setup is working great. I am really happy with it . It took a while to figure it out, but the trouble shooting guidance for garmin got me all set up & I was able to have a great fishing experience. My captain has been the key factor for me. I'm still learning it , but so far, its has been very useful .
I am having some of the same frustrating problems that others have mentioned. The app won't sync with my striker plus 7sv and it will not pair for smart notifications. I find it really frustrating that this app works on an old apple device of mine but not my new android device. After spending an hour and a half on the phone with support, an email to check the status of the problem, and another email to see if Garmin has been able to replicate the problem (which I have still not heard back) I am still not able to pair or sync with my new android device. GARMIN if you fix this issue I would be more than willing to edit my review. Until then I will just be an unhappy customer. Edit: 3/27/19 With yesterdays update smart notifications have been fixed but I am still unable to import/export waypoints to/from my unit.
The Garmin active captain app will not work on my phone all of a sudden. The app will open but when I click on Maps the app closest restarts again. Have reinstalled it several times one time it worked for a day and a half and then it buged out while I was in the middle of the ocean needing to use it on my buddies boat which I've been able to do several times no matter where I was at. Tech support keeps saying it's my phone. Samsung Galaxy A13 all my other apps work great.
i love Garmin products and they have an excellent customer support as far as my experience goes, but as far as the app, cant download maps sometimes it will connect to my chart plotter sometimes it wont. never once have gotten smart notifications even though it indicates device is paired. i want to purchase the G3 ultra maps and transfer it to my device but im scared it won't transfer or even download to the phone itself for that matter. please resolve this issue. keep up the good work!
The app features are nice. But it's worthless to me if I can't sync it with my Garmin GPSMAP 942XS. Every time I get back on my boat, it says it can't sync because there is no suitable SD card loaded into the GPS. But there is! After spending 15 minutes on the phone with Garmin resetting everything from scratch, it works great. That is until the next time I get out to my boat and here we go again. This app is way too buggy.
Does not work properly with Galaxy S24+. Only partial charts download no matter how many times you reinstall the app. You guys need to either bring back the separate boxes to download like when the app first came out or have a download all function. I love my garmin but not being able to interface properly with the app is ridiculous for a high-end company like yours!
I do love the app. Ease for software updates. However, I totally dislike the 250 waypoints per Route. This limitation is totally unacceptable and should be rectified. I have a great Garmin chartplotter but like to plan routes up to and more than 50 miles. With these limitations, I have to break a days route up into 3 and sometimes 4 separate routes.
Not the most intuitive app to use. Several menu selections are not where expected or don't function as expected. Continue to have issues with sharing Quickdraw contours. App doesn't appear to recognize when new contours are added. Having to select "cancel" each & every time I go to the "chart" page is absolutely abominable! To allow/disallow access to location should be a one time choice at the beginning of the session or a on/off switch added to settings. Otherwise a very nice option to use.
I just wasted 8 hours of my life.... I have searched for a solution, but have found none yet. In short, activecaptain will not pair with my garmin942xs Plus. I can connect to the wifi, but the activecaptain page on the device will not go past the "connect to the wifi" page. There isn't a PC/desktop version that can do everything! I would much rather plan a route and manage waypoints from a keyboard instead of a tiny cell phone. Some may like it, but IMO this app blows.
This is one of the worst pieces of garbage I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with. It says "not connected", then when you attempt to connect it won't allow it because it thinks it's already connected. The UI is horrible (I've had it for a week and I still can't make it sync properly), it has no option to download maps I've subscribed to and it won't allow anything to be transferred to the chartplotter anyways. These clowns should be ashamed to attach their names to this.
It's OK. Seems finicky with version downloads. You have an update so you download it, it connects to device, then no update needed, then you disconnect and it says you have an update. So frustrating. I bought Garmin because I consider them more of a software company than any of the other brands. Had to reset the app on the phone for the download to take. Then it says I need to insert an activecaptain card (which I had inserted and was using all along), but it wouldn't recognize it. It wouldn't recognize the updated software version from the device until I inserted a card, which basically means I had to format and re-transfer my maps (over an hour). These loops of errors are SOOO frustrating. I'll give it 2 stars for at least not bricking my device and because it at least has a way to proceed, although extremely time consuming and frustrating. So after syncing and transferring the maps, it still doesn't recognize the newer software on the device. I guess I'll have to live with the app constantly telling me I have new software to download. Buggy and annoying. I was thinking about getting a Garmin watch, but no way after this. Fitbit isn't nearly as buggy.
SAVE YOUR DATA BEFORE DELETING THIS APP! It only saves your POIs on your device, not in a cloud file. This sucks because if you haven't backed it up via SD or chartfinder and you get a new phone or delete the app... it's all gone... This app also doesn't function as well as Navionics (Autotrack and shading just dont work on Garmin). I will say it's the best bang for your buck and simplicity when it comes to fish finder tech, but this whole market is decades behind where it should be... It's a shame we have to pay these prices for something that could be much more advanced.