by Doc – Owner, Founder, Pokemon Go Isn’t Fun Without an Autocatcher
I’ve used every autocatcher under the sun from the Codejunkies’ original autocatcher, the “Gotcha”, to the modern and best stuff out there. There’s a lotta good ones out there these days, but if price isn’t a concern then you really only have one option: a modified Go Plus Plus. These are typically custom-made and only available on Etsy, and their price has shot up from about $120 when I bought mine two years ago to now $180, and I expect they’ll keep rising as the supply of unmodified Go Plus Plus devices dries up. Let me explain how autocatchers work, and why you want this one specifically.
Pokemon Go’s app only allows for two types of autocatcher: the Go Plus, and the Go Plus Plus. (Yes, it’s a stupid name.) The Go Plus lets you use Poke Balls to catch Pokemon, spin stops normally, and the device it’s intended for is just a little pin with a button on it that you click all the freakin’ time if you’re playing the game as intended. It’s not efficient nor is it engaging. So basic autocatchers, which encompasses nearly everything available on the market, can only use this very low-level functionality. They all spoof the app to think they’re just a Go Plus that presses the button constantly.
The second tier is the sweet, sweet tier that frankly changes the entire way you play Pokemon Go, the Go Plus Plus tier. Niantic made it so that if you bought the Go Plus Plus you’d be able to use Great Balls and Ultra Balls by pressing the button, and it would natively autocatch Pokemon with regular Poke Balls. Naturally, hardware modders made it so that the Go Plus Plus button is basically always being held down, so you effectively have an autocatcher that can use Great Balls and Ultra Balls as well. To my knowledge, the only way to get that second tier of autocatcher is by modifying the hardware of a Go Plus Plus. The cost of the hardware mod is typically a solid $80, but the cost of the hardware itself is actually much higher. And yes, it’s basically all from a single Etsy store (the one I linked you earlier) so if that guy quits… we’re screwed.
So if you’re really trying to get the best available autocatcher out there, you don’t have any other choice besides buying a hardware-modded Go Plus Plus, at least until someone figures out how to clone the Go Plus Plus completely so that the Pokemon Go app doesn’t recognize the difference and we no longer have to scrap existing Go Plus Plus devices to make mods.
Amiibo Doctor 