True Crime Coloring Book Review

How We Tested This

We built True Crime Coloring Book version 1.0 from the developer’s source and ran it on an iPhone simulator, then worked through it hands-on: opening the free page and coloring with several swatches, browsing the collections, opening a locked page to reach the paywall, and reading the Settings screen. We didn’t complete a purchase, and we haven’t tested it on an iPad, Mac or Apple Vision Pro. As with every app on this site, including the ones developed by a company affiliated with our editorial team, our findings come from that testing and from Apple’s App Store data, not the developer’s marketing. See our disclosure policy.

Artwork & Content

This is the darkest app we’ve reviewed, and it commits to it. The home screen is styled as a “Case Archive,” with pinned polaroids, red string and file numbers, and every page is presented as a numbered case file. The illustrations are detailed black-line drawings with real texture: our free page, a featured case file built around Ted Bundy’s portrait, surrounds the face with maps, a vintage Beetle, fingerprint cards, a rotary phone and pinned photographs, so there are dozens of regions to fill.

The library has 100 pages in 10 collections of 10: Infamous Serial Killers, Cold Case Files, Crime Scenes, Evidence & Clues, Detective Investigation, Interrogation Rooms, Murder Motels & Dark Roads, Missing Persons, Unsolved Mysteries and a True Crime Newspaper Archive. Many pages are atmospheric places rather than people, such as “Lonely Roadside Motel at Night,” “Empty Highway in the Rain” and “Motel Room with Open Door.”

A word on taste. Several pages, including the free one, depict real criminals, and the app’s own description calls them “inspired by notorious serial killers.” Whether that’s a draw or a dealbreaker is a personal call; we’d only say it’s worth knowing before you download.

User Experience

Coloring is tap-to-fill: pick a swatch and tap a region, and it fills immediately. Swatches have names (Brick and Rust among them) in a moody palette of reds, ochres and greens, with a full palette button for more. Undo and redo, a zoom control and a “fit to screen” view sit above the swatches, and the header shows a completion percentage for the page, which also appears on the home screen under “Continue Coloring.” Settings include an option to fill the next empty area with the selected color, haptics, a dark ambient soundtrack, saving a finished file to Photos (it asks for photo access) and a reset that clears your colors but keeps purchases.

Navigation is simple: the home screen leads with a featured case and an “Open File” button, then your in-progress pages, then the collections.

Purchases & Value

Tapping any locked page opens the “Unlock the Full Archive” paywall, which has a clear Close button. On the day we tested, it offered three options:

The paywall spells out the renewal terms under the button (“Free for 3 days, then $19.99 per year. Renews automatically each year until you cancel”). The App Store listing shows the same three items. Those subscription prices are lower than the same developer’s Vintage Halloween Coloring and Retro Toy Box Coloring Book ($6.99 a month, $24.99 a year), while the lifetime unlock is higher ($39.99 against $34.99). But with 1 page free out of 100, you’re effectively deciding from a single sample, which is why Value is this app’s lowest score. If you’re unsure, our guide to how to read a coloring app paywall explains trial terms, and how to cancel a coloring app subscription covers stopping one.

Safety & Privacy

No ads appeared at any point in our testing. The App Store privacy label says “Data Not Collected,” which is the developer’s statement and not something we verified. The page library ships inside the app, and the only web links we found point to the privacy policy and Apple’s license agreement. There’s no account, chat or social feature.

There’s also no parental gate in front of the paywall, which is normal for an app made for adults but one more reason not to leave it on a device a child uses. If you share an iPad with your kids, our guide to stopping accidental in-app purchases takes ten minutes.

Age Rating

The App Store rates True Crime Coloring Book 16+, listing frequent mature or suggestive themes, horror or fear themes, and guns or other weapons. The app describes itself as “Dark Cases Mystery for Adults,” and everything from the copy to the soundtrack is pitched at adults. We agree with the rating: this is not a family coloring app. For kids, start with our best coloring apps for kids; our guide to what 4+ means on a coloring app explains how Apple’s age ratings work.

Offline & Compatibility

The App Store listing says “No internet needed. 100% offline,” and in our build the page library ships inside the app. We haven’t yet run a dedicated Airplane Mode session, so our Offline score is provisional. The listing says it runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS or iPadOS 16 or later, on Macs with Apple silicon, and on Apple Vision Pro; see our guide to using iPad coloring apps on a Mac.

Performance

The app loaded collections and pages smoothly in our session on the simulator, and fills landed cleanly on detailed pages.

Our Take

True Crime Coloring Book does something no other coloring app we’ve reviewed does, and does it with real craft: the artwork is detailed, the case-file design is consistent and the coloring tools are solid. It’s an adults-only app, and whether you’ll enjoy coloring real cases is a matter of taste. The usual catch from this developer applies, with just 1 free page of 100, though its $4.99 monthly and $19.99 yearly plans undercut this developer’s other nostalgic adult apps. If you’d rather keep things nostalgic than dark, see Vintage Halloween Coloring or Retro Toy Box Coloring Book, browse our best dark and spooky coloring apps for adults, or see all our best coloring apps for adults.