# Shaka Oahu Audio Tour Guide — user reviews > 241 indexed App Store user reviews of Shaka Oahu Audio Tour Guide by Shaka Guide, rated 4.90/5 from 3,900 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/shaka-oahu-audio-tour-guide/id1070908009/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/shaka-oahu-audio-tour-guide/id1070908009.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 3,653 · 4★ 137 · 3★ 29 · 2★ 16 · 1★ 65 ## What do users think of Shaka Oahu Audio Tour Guide? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 🤙 Excellent tour guide - 👍 Easy to use and follow - 🌴 Informative and entertaining - 🎶 Great music and narration - 🗺️ Accurate GPS and directions - 🕰️ Flexible at your own pace - 💰 Great value for money **Cons** - 🕰️ Tours take longer than expected - 🔇 Some gaps in narration/music - 🚗 Difficulty linking to car audio **Commonly reported bugs** - App gets stuck during download/processing - Directions not always accurate, especially for closed roads **Most requested features** - Allow starting tour from any point - Provide option for clockwise/counter-clockwise tours - Integrate more food/restaurant recommendations ## Newest reviews (18 of 241) ### 5/5 — Grand Island Circle Tour *2025-09-12, version 9.0.8* Did majority of stops! Loved the app. HIGHLY recommend!!! ### 5/5 — Great App but glitchy *2025-09-07, version 9.0.8* We love this app, and And referred to all our friends visiting the islands all the time. Recently, we rented a Toyota minivan and when we tried to link the app to the Bluetooth entertainment system we could not adjust the volume of the app. This was a little annoying, but eventually, we linked our phone to our personal speaker that we brought to play music on the beach. I’ve been using this app for over five years and learn something new each time. ### 5/5 — Definitely worth it *2025-07-01, version 9.0.6* My wife and I were visiting Hawaii and we weren’t sure how our island drive was gonna go, then one of the employees at our hotel told us about this app, and let me tell you, it changed the day dramatically, from just a drive to a tour, and let me tell you, I’ll never forget it. If you’re thinking of getting this app, for any tour, do it. It’s an excellent companion. ### 5/5 — Another great experience with Shaka Guide! *2025-06-30, version 9.0.6* This was our second time using Shaka guide, the first being a couple of years ago on Maui when we used the Road to Hana guide. Just like last time, the app was extremely helpful in directing us, pointing out off the beaten path experiences along the way, as well as making sure we hit all of the must-do attractions on the route. There's really nothing I can suggest to improve! ### 5/5 — Loved this app! *2025-06-28, version 9.0.6* We used the Shaka app for the North Loop and the eastern shore of Oahu. We went to some beautiful spots we wouldn’t have seen without it, and we loved Jeff’s narration. We could have done both of these without Shaka, but we were so glad we decided to use it. Definitely enhanced our trip! ### 5/5 — Great! *2025-06-24, version 9.0.6* The Grand Circle island tour is a must. It is an insightful and thorough tour. ### 5/5 — Great tour ! *2025-06-23, version 9.0.6* Second time around and just as good the second time!! ### 5/5 — Grand Circle Best Tour ! *2025-05-11, version 8.4.5* Loved listening to the Amazing history of Oahu , excellent directions ,music along the way and great spots to stop . We left at 9 am done by 6:30 but didn’t get to complete everything because things were closed by the time we got up that far on the North shore . My advice is to skip the things you don’t want to do to make it on time for the fun stuff on the north shore for the falls and plantation dole . We wanted to do both ,but they were closed by the time we got there … otherwise I highly recommend the tour and I can’t wait to use it again on other adventures !!! ### 5/5 — So worth it! *2025-04-13, version 8.4.4* What an amazing app for touring Hawaii. We let Shaka guide us and saw the best sites, tasted the best food, and caught the best waves. Highly recommend! ### 5/5 — Best Hawaiian Tour Guide *2025-03-26, version 8.4.4* Uncle Shaka narrates a wonderful tour that covers all the islands! Love it ! ### 5/5 — Great App to go around Hawaii! *2025-03-09, version 8.4.4* No need for a tour guide! Shaka will provide it for you! ### 5/5 — Best way to see Oahu *2025-03-03, version 8.4.4* My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed this experience. We went on Sunday morning and made the farmers market in Kailua, was fantastic. We look forward to coming back and doing another tour. ### 5/5 — Circle Island Tour✅✅✅🏝️ *2025-02-24, version 8.4.4* We did the Circle Island tour last week. It was a fabulous day! Great suggestions for places to stop, delicious food choices and wonderful stories and music along the way! ### 5/5 — Amazing app and wonderful experience! *2025-02-04, version 8.4.4* We could not have been happier with this app. We did the grand circle island tour and the level of detail was fantastic. The highlights were amazing, stop recommendations were great, and the technology behind the GPS enabling was seamless. We had the option to listen to lovely Hawaiian music in the background while we drove and it would fade out and our guide would come back on and provide information. The audible directions provided were clear and perfectly timed. We started at Ko Olina and could not see everything in one day there was so much to see! You definitely can’t stop everywhere so pick and choose. Lots of food options so you won’t need a big dinner if you stop at all the food recommendations. If you really want to see as much as you can and you plan to stop a lot and get out and explore, start early and think about doing this in two days. Would definitely do this again and explore other tours. Highly recommend!!! ### 5/5 — Best way to see O’ahu *2024-12-27, version 8.4.4* We used this app for three different tours of the island and enjoyed every one of them! The information was great and we never would have experienced the island the same way without paying hundreds of dollars on bus tours. I highly recommend if you are renting a car and want to see all the different areas, especially the backyard rainforest. Worth the money! ### 5/5 — Fun way to see Oahu *2024-12-26, version 8.4.4* We enjoyed the Grand Circle Tour of the Island. We did this tour on Christmas Day, so a few places were closed, but we managed to see so much! The beaches and parks were breathtaking, especially Sunset Beach on the North Shore. We loved all the fresh fruit along the way, and especially enjoyed our pineapple mango smoothies! The app gave us a good bit of history about the Native Hawaiians and their land. I highly recommend this app! ### 5/5 — The perfect activity *2024-12-26, version 8.4.4* We rented a car and got so much out of the experience with the audio tour. It was entertaining, easy to follow, and very informative. It’s the perfect thing if you want to learn and have a heightened experience. Very well done! ### 5/5 — Best Tour! *2024-12-03, version 8.4.4* So glad we did this. I was highly skeptical but decided to give this guide a try. The information was interesting and we were able to choose for ourselves which places to stop. Loved the food recommendations and we felt like we had our own private tour. Bonus - we could hear and understand everything unlike on a bus or trolley tour. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Sorry, but dong the tour in the exact sequence and direction is pathetic! *2024-07-09* The fact the app doesn’t allow you to jump in and out of any location in any direction is cheap! The fact that it costs over $29 USD for each person for the Oahu bundle certainly is NOT cheap! How difficult could it have been to tag every location with GPS coordinates and then play the audio when you are in the area irrespective of what sequence you travel in. It’s like the developer thought the audio was on an old cassette tape and skipping back and forward wasn’t going to be possible. Unfortunately I wasted my money. ### 1/5 — Awful *2024-02-06, version 8.2.5* The app will not connect the car use GPS in the car system no matter what we try then we can’t access the tour information without it ### 1/5 — Was a fan till I upgraded *2022-11-04, version 8.0.1* I had pulled this app down when it first came out. I thought it was useful. I opened the app, unwittingly chose to upgrade and got locked out of the app, and needed to pay to use it now. There should have been a warning. I am Kama Aina and I won’t be using this anymore. ### 1/5 — Not free at all *2017-03-04, version 1.1* Said was 'Free' so downloaded, then went to use while out and had to purchase maps. Should have just paid and downloaded Gypsy while I had the wifi rather than being caught out on the road. ### 2/5 — Can’t just set your own directions *2024-10-10, version 8.4.3* And a different voice option would be great ### 2/5 — Drive slow *2024-01-18, version 8.2.5* Not enough forewarning on when to turn, even going 25 mph. Once off track, there’s no help getting back. Needs updates on roads. Some were closed. Some didn’t exist. Wouldn’t continue tour until you got back to missed spots (even though we couldn’t get to them). Very frustrating. Waterfall hike was treacherous. Wear good shoes. Not for the out of shape. Nice gravel turns to big slippery rocks in a hurry. ### 2/5 — Waste of money *2019-09-12, version 2.0.6* Unsure if it’s the car we travelled with, but the audio was next to none, everytime somewhere appeared on the map there was minimal info, we missed destinations (shark bay/Kailua) due to the lack of audio through apple carplay. We started from halfway and unsure how this app goes from the beginning. However it was difficult to modify the start point settings and personally felt like it was a waste of $15, we used google maps the whole time and it worked better with apple carplay. ### 3/5 — Just okay tour, has navigation synch issues *2026-01-20, version 9.1.1* The Shaka Maui and Kona apps are great, with insightful and easy to listen to narration. The Oahu guide app struggles with starting navigation when you are not starting from a preselected location, and the Apple Play synch in the car was far from seamless. The recommendations along the way seemed to be to advertising business that are already play a strong social media game, and not necessarily local gems according to the locals. Lastly, the narration suffered from dad jokes and corny humor. I prefer more straight up narration without the cringe humor. ### 3/5 — Still Processing *2022-09-10, version 6.0.0* I was excited to download the North Shore driving tour before we hit the road to North Shore. It took several hours to complete, and yes, I had WIFI at our hotel, 4 hours later it still said processing. So I decided I couldn’t hold up our day any longer and left for our drive to North Shore. Messaged the app and I was told to uninstall and reinstall that sometimes this happens with certain phones, I have an iPhone with AT&T, 🙄 nevertheless I was no longer in a WIFI area and said forget it, give me my money back, sent the receipt as they requested, Apple sent me a refund. North Shore Tour still says processing, obviously they have issues with their North Shore tour, super disappointed because I heard such great things form a travel group I’m part off. My advise if your going to do this tour, do it several days before you plan to do the tour so you have time to monkey with it if it doesn’t work. ### 4/5 — Oahu No Sho Tour *2026-03-18, version 9.1.3* Love Shaka but rough start from Ko Olina with the app’s directions to the starting point. It tired to have us do 2 illegal u turns as directed to Apple Maps and did not guide us about staying out of express lane to exit 8B. It just played happy music while we got 30 min off track. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Worth it! *2026-08-28, version 9.1.8* The tour was pretty cool. We went at our own pace and it was super easy and accurate ### 5/5 — Not helpful at all *2026-07-17, version 9.1.7* Had high expectations for this app. I have been using it for the last two days and it has been extremely disappointing. When I used to Knapp for a different company while I was driving, new stories would pop up in helpful information not with this app. We are the opportunity to go all over the island yet this app doesn’t cover large areas. It has become the joke of the trip and after two days I have to delete it. ### 5/5 — Exceptional Tour Guide *2026-07-14, version 9.1.7* Our Catamaran Captain recommended this app! It was clutch! THE best tool for touring Oahu. It’s as if you have a local in the front seat with you. ❤️ ### 5/5 — Recommend! *2026-06-08, version 9.1.6* Always love using this tour when I come to Oahu. The guides voice is enjoyable and I like bringing him along for the ride. Lots a great history and stores. ### 5/5 — Amazing. *2026-06-07, version 9.1.6* We used the guide today on the island tour and I must say we are totally impressed. Amazing narration, directions were on point and it was easy to add stops to our itinerary and skip those which did not appeal to us. Unfortunately we were delayed and missed a couple things due to their being closed but I would recommend this to anyone touring the island. Best $20 we spent in Hawaii! ### 5/5 — Best Oahu Hawaii Self Guided Tour App *2026-06-06, version 9.1.6* I used this app twice. First when I went to Oahu with my wife in 2022, we did the Grand Circle Island Tour, it was Amazing, very memorable. Today in 2026, we came back to Oahu with my 4 kids, and we did Legendary North Shore Loop, everyone got a good time. My kids said they had fun and will remember this trip forever. Thank you for making this app. ### 5/5 — Best trip ever *2026-04-16, version 9.1.3* I’ve been to so many places and our first time in Hawaii like any other place I want to see it all in a short time but with this app I was able to see the entire island and hit all the popular spots for way less than a guided tour just me and my wife choosing where we wanted to go and spend as much time as we wanted at each location not being rushed back on a bus and being over crowded with people absolutely the best trip ever thanks to this app ### 5/5 — Fantastic *2026-03-08, version 9.1.3* Directions are spot on, the history and stories along the way make the tours interesting and the Hawaiian music played really adds to the whole trip. Absolutely fantastic ### 5/5 — Best Tour & App! *2026-02-18, version 9.1.1* So glad we were told of Shaka Guide Tours when we visited Oahu! So easy to use, directions were spot on, locations were all the popular ones & local treasures that you’d never find on your own. And you hear stories, legend, history, & location themed music while traveling between points of interest. (If for some reason you don’t want to hear anything but directions you have that choice. I’d recommend enjoying all that is included in your tour.) I have done all of the Shaka Guide’s Oahu tours every time I go visit my family that moved to Oahu, and love it each time! I’ve also done other locations that Shaka Guide has done, and all have been Grrreat! They are expanding to many other locations, & I’m very excited about that bc I’ve never experienced a travel tour like Shaka! 😎🤙 ### 5/5 — Amazing and so much fun! *2025-10-24, version 9.0.9* We did the North Shore Loop and saw so so many things we probably would have passed by if not for the guide. The driving directions were very clear, and we found all the stops easily. The stories and history narrated throughout the drive kept us entertained all day, and were so informative. Looking forward to using the Maui app for Road to Hana in a few days! --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-04.*