Slackwater
FishBrain
Navionics Boating
Windy
Anchorages.co
Aqua Map
React Server
Slackwater is a tide and fishing app for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.
It shows the tide curve for a spot with the day's high and low times, when slack water arrives and which way the current turns next, and the solunar windows anglers plan around. Tide predictions are computed on the device from NOAA harmonic data, so the app keeps working where coastal signal drops out.
The free tier covers up to three spots. It includes the tide curve and the day's high and low times, a map picker that finds your nearest tide station, today's bite rating with the moon phase and the next major window, best days and low tides three days ahead, slack water and when the current turns, and a session log that fills in the tide state and bite window for you. Air pressure and the direction it is heading come from the device barometer. There is an Apple Watch app, home screen widgets and a Live Activity for the next tide, plus iCloud backup and a file export you can restore or delete whenever you want.
Premium adds alerts for low tide, high tide, slack water, the bite window or any tide height you pick, best days and low tides two weeks out, the full solunar day with every major and minor window plus sun and moon times, twilight and golden hour, a 7-day tide and bite forecast, and unlimited spots. Premium is $3.99 a month or $24.99 a year with a one-week trial, and Lifetime unlocks it once for $39.99.
Spots and settings stay on the device and in your own iCloud. There is no account, no server of ours holding your data, and no ads.
Predictions are estimates for reference only. They are not for navigation or life-safety decisions, so check official NOAA tide tables and nautical charts.
Slackwater React ServerSlackwater's answer
The tide math runs on the phone. Slackwater carries the NOAA harmonic constituents for the stations you save and computes the curve locally, so the tide times, the solunar windows and the alerts all still work in a marsh or a canyon with no bars. Several of the free tide apps are online only, which fails in exactly the places you need them. Slack water also gets treated as a first-class thing here: the app tells you when the current actually turns, not only when the height peaks, which is the moment most of this planning is really about.
Slackwater's answer
Scope and price for the person actually standing in the water. The large fishing platform runs about $75 a year and is mostly a social network with a catch log around it. Slackwater is a timing tool: $24.99 a year, $3.99 a month, or $39.99 once for Lifetime, and free for three spots with no ads and no account. It also covers the parts the simpler free tide apps leave out, including slack water and the current turn, a bite rating for the day, alerts at any tide height you choose, a session log that fills in the conditions for you, and an Apple Watch app with widgets and a Live Activity so the next tide is on your wrist and your lock screen.
Slackwater's answer
Inshore and surf anglers, kayak and small boat people, surfers, clammers, and anyone whose plan for the next six hours depends on what the water is doing. They tend to fish the same handful of places over and over, which is why the free tier is three spots rather than a countdown to a paywall. Most of them are standing somewhere with one bar or none, so working offline is a requirement here rather than a bonus feature.
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