Our app gets background location updates and has been working well right up to, and including iOS 16.3.1.
However, testing with iOS 16.4 we are finding that background location updates stop shortly after they start. I have spoken with other developers and they’re noticing the same thing.
Anyone else using background location updates finding this to be a problem?
The issue that is described here due to the changes with iOS 16.4 (and above) which affect the behavior of apps tracking location in the background.
Beginning in iOS 16.4, apps calling both startUpdatingLocation() AND startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges() may get suspended in the background if they are specifying low accuracy and distance filtering in the location manager settings.
If your app needs only low accuracy locations of kCLLocationAccuracyKilometer and up, use startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges() for that purpose instead.
If your app requires continuous high accuracy locations in the background, you must set the following location manager properties:
Alternatively you can turn on the location indicator which will avoid the issue. You can do this by setting
If you implement the above changes in your app, its location update behavior will be similar to behavior prior to iOS 16.4. Without these changes, your app may not be able to receive continuous background location updates.
Thank you for the response! This is very clear.
How can I find out if there are plans to fix the issue in the next version?
@auroracloud This is not a bug that is waiting to be fixed. The change is by design. Although there could be some fine tuning of the requirements for the property settings in the future to enable background location updates, this change is here to stay, and apps need to be updated to follow the guidance in order to continue background location updates.
I have encountered this problem too. It seems that it cannot be used properly since iOS 16.4 beta 2. Does anyone know how to solve this problem?
I tried now on my iPad with iOS 16.4 RC and there is no problem with the app staying in the background. I switched off significant location updates as well as part of the experiment, the app still stays in the background with no problem. ~20 minutes now. If you can test this on iPad with iOS 16.4 then we can see if this is iPad vs iPhone that makes a difference or something in your vs mine configuration of a LocationManager.
I have confirmed an issue with iOS16.4 / iPadOS16.4 RC where location cannot be obtained when the app is in the background. (This also occurs on iPadOS 16.4RC.) Has anyone received a useful response from Apple on bug reports, etc.?
Are you using showsBackgroundLocationIndicator = false or showsBackgroundLocationIndicator = true? Are you calling startUpdatingLocation() when the app is foregrounded or backgrounded?
I filed a bug report: https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/feedback/12082689
Before iOS 16.4, we could reliably start
CLLocationManagerin the background (for example, in response to aCLCircularRegionexit or aCLVisitarrival) by callingstartUpdatingLocation(), and keep it running indefinitely, assuming we had "Always" location permissions and the "Location updates" background mode. As of iOS 16.4, this no longer works reliably if theCLLocationManageris started when the app is backgrounded andshowsBackgroundLocationIndicator = false. It does still seem to work if theCLLocationManageris started when the app is foregrounded andshowsBackgroundLocationIndicator = true. We have seen a few similar reports on the developer forums: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/727015 https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/726945 Did this behavior change in iOS 16.4? Thank you.
Same here. CLLocation stops location updates in iOS 16.4 if it starts running in the background. Any work around patch to fix this issue? Should I just set showsBackgroundLocationIndicator = true and will it solve the issue?
@nickradar. Went for a drive now with iOS 16.4 public and for me it all works 100% unless I'm severely overlooking something. I do have showsBackgroundLocationIndicator = true on the location manager that records a track. I don't have it on the location manager that listens for regions (iBeacons), but I do call startUpdatingLocation() on a region location manager before handing it over to the track location manager with showsBackgroundLocationIndicator = true, otherwise my track recording location manager would not start/stay recording in the background, I thought it was iOS specific - it might be iOS 16.4 specific then.
I have competitor apps installed for the automatic mileage tracking, and 2 of 5 (all that really track) recorded now something like:
That would correspond to points in the significant location updates, maybe. No recording in between.
That's going to be interesting.
One more thing, on significant location events I do ask for the background time extension. Not sure that plays any role, I ask due to other things, but also start a probing location manager that has showsBackgroundLocationIndicator = false and it works. Hope this will not give Apple any wrong ideas :).
I'm only seeing the issue when showsBackgroundLocationIndicator = false and startUpdatingLocation() is called while the app is backgrounded. When showsBackgroundLocationIndicator = true and startUpdatingLocation() is called while the app is foregrounded, no issues. Before iOS 16.4, both cases worked fine.
I'm not starting background tasks, although I'm also not seeing [[UIApplication sharedApplication] backgroundTimeRemaining] ticking down.
I'll do some more testing tomorrow.
I have the same problem. Background location updates stopped working. The issue is in the simulator too. I'm trying some configurations but the problem persists. I hope Apple sends a quick hotfix.
I'm testing now on simulator and for me if I set showsBackgroundLocationIndicator = true, the location updates are working in background and foreground correctly.
Today I will test real device.
Yeah, I'm only seeing the issue when showsBackgroundLocationIndicator = false.
I can confirm that showsBackgroundLocationIndicator = true solve the problem.
Is not a definitive solution but could be an hotfix.
I hope that Apple fix it on CoreLocation framework.
The issue that is described here due to the changes with iOS 16.4 (and above) which affect the behavior of apps tracking location in the background.
Beginning in iOS 16.4, apps calling both startUpdatingLocation() AND startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges() may get suspended in the background if they are specifying low accuracy and distance filtering in the location manager settings.
If your app needs only low accuracy locations of kCLLocationAccuracyKilometer and up, use startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges() for that purpose instead.
If your app requires continuous high accuracy locations in the background, you must set the following location manager properties:
Alternatively you can turn on the location indicator which will avoid the issue. You can do this by setting
If you implement the above changes in your app, its location update behavior will be similar to behavior prior to iOS 16.4. Without these changes, your app may not be able to receive continuous background location updates.
Thank you for the response! This is very clear.
How can I find out if there are plans to fix the issue in the next version?
@auroracloud This is not a bug that is waiting to be fixed. The change is by design. Although there could be some fine tuning of the requirements for the property settings in the future to enable background location updates, this change is here to stay, and apps need to be updated to follow the guidance in order to continue background location updates.
Hi. Do you have a source for this? By the way, enabling the showsBackgroundLocationIndicator flag has worked for me too.
I did not want to add a new comment. This was just a question to Gualiter Made by the way.
I too would like to know the source.@Gualtier Malde
Hi
I have the same problem in my app. I need to be able to use startUpdatingLocation with a distance filter set (200m) without setting the showsBackgroundLocationIndicator flag to true. My app needs to, in the background, be able to determine deltas in the user's location to figure out if a user is travelling or not. I'd use the CoreMotion API but that's also limited in the background, and from my testing only works when the locations are coming through in the background as well, so I am using a combination of both.
Using the significant change monitoring service is not reliable or frequent enough, by the time that my app MAYBE gets a location update through that service, I've missed out on half of the trip. Also, it seems that region monitoring has the same problem, I tried to implement it but my app stops receiving locations in the background. Please help, this is quite urgent and is clearly causing breaking changes for everyone affected. It's pretty inaccurate that my app now has to show a location pill indefinitely to users throughout the night or during the day when their location isn't even changing enough for me to use it. I can understand if the pill shows when my app starts receiving locations and goes away when my distance filter is no longer being exceeded, but this it really excessive.
Also, it's counter intuitive that my app can receive locations freely with no distanceFilter set in the background without notifying the user about this with the pill?
As a developer, I'd expect better communication from Apple to its developers of changes such as this that have the power to completely break apps. And clearly this change wasn't thought through very well.
One would expect changes like this to be announced at WWDC so we all have time to prepare and provide feedback. And Apple would have time to update the documentation :). I wonder what/why was the urgency in this case.
Completely agreed, the docs do nothing to address this requirement and it's been an issue for weeks already. In my mind this is actually a bug, given that it's not performing as designed according to the documentation made public to developers. Here's the documentation on background location updates. Documentation Link
We have made changes according to the answer [@Gualtier Malde](https://developer.apple.com/forums/profile/Gualtier Malde), but in iOS 16.5 we again notice that the application goes into suspended state while the app is in background. This does not happen on all devices and it is difficult to understand what the problem is
This change also caused significant problems for our app. Removing the distance filter seems to have fixed the issue and the app seems to be running ok in background again. I use accuracy 100m and no location indicator.
However, one drawback of not having the distance filter is that when moving, even walking or on a bike, I get 20-30 events per minute mostly with no change in coordinates.
I suspect an increase in the battery consumption assigned to our app due to this, which if true will make users unhappy.
@hubbobubbo @Meluzov @dimix @staninprague Have you been able to get it working the way it did for iOS <16.4, I have had to pause my product with thousands of users since it no longer works for iOS >16.4
