Toca Hair Salon 3

My Experience with Toca Hair Salon 3

I grabbed this app on a Saturday afternoon because it was sitting at a solid rating and I was curious if a kids’ hair salon game could actually hold my attention. I’m the kind of person who digs into every menu, pushes every button, and finds the cracks in the code. So I tested it on my iPhone 14, trying to break it by rapid-firing tools and switching characters mid-cut. Day one was fun—I gave a bald character a rainbow mohawk and thought, okay, this has some charm. But by day three, the magic wore thin. The creativity is there, sure, but I hit a wall where every haircut started feeling the same. I even tried contacting support after the app froze on me when I used the curling iron on a wet hair character—their reply took over 12 hours and just said “try restarting the app.” That’s not helpful when you’re mid-creation.

Features Worth Noting

The tool set is better than I expected for a kids’ app. You get scissors that actually snip with sound, a razor that gives that rough texture, and a curling iron that hisses. The hair dye system lets you layer colors, so you can go from blonde to blue to green in one session—pretty cool. The characters come in all skin tones and hair types, which is a win for diversity, but I noticed the curly hair tool doesn’t always curl evenly; sometimes it just flattens out. The photo booth saves your creations and even lets you share them, though I wish it had more backgrounds than just a generic white wall. There’s also a salon decoration mode, but it’s basic—you drag a couch or a mirror, and that’s it. No real customization beyond preset furniture.

What Needs Work

The app has some rough edges that bugged me. First, the loading screen takes about 10 seconds every time you switch characters—on an iPhone 14, that’s slow. Second, the undo button is hidden in a sub-menu; I accidentally shaved a character bald and had to dig to fix it. Third, the sound effects can’t be turned off individually—you get the full salon noise or nothing, which got annoying after an hour. Also, the app doesn’t save your progress automatically. I lost a whole creation because I backed out to the menu too fast. Support was vague on this too—they just said “make sure to use the save button,” but that button is tiny and easy to miss. These issues make it feel like a beta version, not a finished product.

Pricing

It’s a paid app, and I think it’s priced okay for what it offers—around the cost of a coffee and a snack. No ads, no in-app purchases trying to sucker you into buying virtual hairspray, which I respect. But given the bugs and shallow long-term gameplay, I’d say wait for a sale. I paid full price and now I’m a little bitter about it. For the same money, I’ve seen kids’ apps that last weeks of playtime—this one’s more like a weekend distraction.

Developer Notes

Toca Boca has a decent reputation with kids’ apps, and you can tell they tried to make this inclusive and colorful. But the slow support response and the lack of updates addressing the freezing bug bug me. I checked the version history—the last update was two months ago, and it only added new hats. No performance fixes. For a paid app, that’s lazy. I expected more polish from a developer with their track record.

Security & Privacy

This is a kids’ app, so privacy matters. I checked the permissions—no camera access, no microphone, no location tracking. It does ask for photo storage to save your creations, which is fair. The privacy policy is standard Toca Boca stuff: no data collection, no third-party ads. That’s a solid green flag. I’d still supervise a young child using it, but only because of the weird glitches, not because of shady data practices.