Fast catching in Pokemon Go: everything you need to know

At some point in every trainer's journey on Pokemon Go, the player will find themselves asking, "why can't I just skip this slow shakey-Pokeball animation and catch 3x the number of Pokemon in the same amount of time?" Well, you can.

For a long time, what is arguably a bug in the game's handling of menu state has been *ahem* used to the advantage of canny trainers keen to maximise their catch rate. This 'mechanic' has been open, public knowledge for years and is heavily used by the community, and Niantic has never fixed it.

It's likely that Niantic are aware of how popular the trick is, and how vital it is to the progress and desire to spend of hardcore players, and have chosen to leave it in the game (they could just fix it properly and give us the option to skip the animation, but that's another discussion).

The benefits of fast catching in Pokemon Go

It’s easy to demonstrate the benefits of using the fast catching method by talking about the time it takes to catch a Pokemon with and without using it.

When catching a Pokemon normally, if you’re quick and get the Pokemon first go, your time-to-catch is around 19 seconds at the quickest, due to the animations of the catch sequence, the XP pop-up and the general pace of the process. That doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re playing for several hours or heading out for a full day of grinding hoping to catch hundreds of Pokemon, every second counts.

If you use the fast catch method, you can cut that time down to a lightning-quick 7 seconds by skipping everything that happens after throwing the ball. The game still processes your catch as normal, you just get to skip the animations and move onto catching the next Pokemon a lot quicker.

Let’s do a quick calculation: if you were to catch one Pokemon after another (presuming spawns could keep up) for one hour, without quick catching you could theoretically top out at around 160-190 Pokemon in that timeframe depending on your catch luck and efficiency. If you were using the fast catching method that whole time, you could catch 400-500 Pokemon.

Add those hours up, and it makes almost no sense to continue playing Pokemon Go without employing the use of this mechanic, especially when grinding hard or in busy areas with lots of Pokemon spawns.

How to use the fast catch method in Pokemon Go

Whilst the mechanics involved in executing a successful fast catch can seem awkward and complex at first, after a few goes you’ll be doing it naturally without even thinking about it.

1: Drag and hold the berry button

With your left thumb: touch, hold and drag the berry button over towards the centre of the screen.

2: Attempt the catch

With your right finger, you can now attempt the catch as you normally would. Just keep that berry button held down and dragged over the whole time as you did in step one.

3: Release berry button

As soon as the ball hits the Pokemon and the animation starts playing of the Pokemon being captured in the ball, it is safe to release your left thumb from the berry button. Release your left thumb now! The berry menu should pop up over the animation. Tap the screen to close it.

4: Flee the encounter

If done currently, despite the catching animation now playing, the button to run from the encounter should still be there at the top left of your screen. Press it, and you’re done!

5: Check capture and repeat

At this point, you cannot be sure you have caught the Pokemon until you check your Recents, or have a quest that tracks Pokemon caught, so it displays a popup when you successfully catch.

Despite the slight downside of not being immediately certain if you caught the Pokemon or not, often you’ll still see the Pokemon on the map regardless of whether you caught it or not; this is due to the glitchy nature of this mechanic. Tapping the Pokemon will result in it immediately despawning if you caught it on your attempt. Otherwise, the encounter will load and you can attempt your fast catch again.

Even when you have to try a few times, it’s still faster than sitting through the animations of the catch encounter.