The municipality is one of very few in Sweden which has not been amalgamated and thus still has the same area as the unit formed out of a parish (socken) by the first local government acts of 1862.

They are considered to stretch from the Vinga Lighthouse up to the coastal town of Marstrand in the municipality of Kungälv.

A local referendum in 2003 in Öckerö Municipality rejected the plans for a future bridge to the mainland.

During the Viking Age the islands of Öckerö belonged to the Norwegian kings, and the part of the coast was known as Älvsyssel.

Ömål, also called öbo, is a Swedish Götamål dialect spoken on the islands of the Öckerö municipality.