Continuous location in background or after suspension

You need to deal with two important facts:

1. Your app will get suspended and resumed.

2. Your app will get suspended, terminated, and relaunched by the system.

and iOS is going to do either or both of those things between location updates.

If you don't handle both of those cases correctly, then your app is going to stop receiving updates when you hit the case you're not dealing with right. The most likely case is that you're not handling the location key properly.

> I would like to get it more frequently, like once every few seconds.

Which is more important to your app? Update frequency or accuracy?

As you note, sLUs are the result of course grain changes. Does the app track and map a travelled route or does it provide turn-by-turn navigation, or...?

If nav, you should instead be using kCLLocationAccuracyBestForNavigation

It sounds to me tho, that your app is a tracker, in which case you need to focus on energy use first, I think, then take what the system provides in terms of accuracy

See:

- kCLLocationAccuracyBestForNavigation

- https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/EnergyGuide-iOS/LocationBestPractices.html

Request Quick Location Updates

If your app just needs a quick fix on the user’s location, it’s best to call the

requestLocation

locationManager:didUpdateLocations:

Thanks for your response. Could you elaborate on how I need to handle these cases? How do I identify these two cases happening and what do I need to do in each of these cases? Also, I am not sure what you mean by location key. b.t.w, I am ssuming you are talknig about location updates and not significant location change?

Happy to report that I finally got it working. The app has been capturing my trips as expected in the background for 5 days straight now. The key was to detect driving and only then increase the frquency of location updates (to use GPS chip), along with setting locationManager.pausesLocationUpdatesAutomatically to false (as suggested by KMT -- thanks!!)

1) Start off with low accuracy location updates (KM accuracy, which uses only cell tower, no GPS chip)

2) When driving is detected (based on change in location), increase location accuracy to bestForNavigation

3) When driving seems to have ceased (based on speed or change in location), reduce location accuracy back to KM

4) At all times, keep locationManager.pausesLocationUpdatesAutomatically set to false

Hope this helps others too!

Hi karela,

It would be great if you shared some code for step 2 and step 3 that how you detect driving or ceased?

I have the same problem with you and I've just despaired than I saw your question and you solved that makes me happy?

I will try to achive this problem myself,

But as I said it would be greate if you share some parts.

Thanks.

Karela is this solution still working for you in the latest versions of iOS???

Hi Karela,
I also have very similar problem statement to get location updates after every few seconds irrespective of the activity of an individual, what I observed while testing my code is that the app is giving location updates in background mode for hours and sometimes 1-2 days but then stops. My use case is to get location updates until the user kills the app. Also, I have used standard location update as I need updates after every few seconds so can't wait for a significant update. In implementation thing, I have done quite similar things

[self.locationManager setAllowsBackgroundLocationUpdates:YES];

[self.locationManager disallowDeferredLocationUpdates];

[self.locationManager setPausesLocationUpdatesAutomatically:NO];

self.locationManager.desiredAccuracy = kCLLocationAccuracyBest;

self.locationManager.distanceFilter = 0;

[self.locationManager requestLocation];

Can you throw some light over this, also I think since Apple allows background modes to get location updates and if the phone has sufficient memory, then it shouldn't be terminating the app. What do you think that why your app worked by changing desired accuracy (depending on activity)

Any help would be highly appreciated.

Hi,
I'm having the same issue. But my case is location service is stopping after a few minutes.
Did you re-start your location service in time to time?
Did you test this on latest iOS version (12.1)?
It would be great if you share some parts.
Thanks,

Hi Karela,

Could you please share the code that you used to get location event in background. I am developing similar app where we need continuous location update even in background. We have used following methods to get the location.

1. Get the permission from user for always allow location.

2. Added permission in plist

3, Enabled location in background capability.

4. Added geofencing for monitoring.

5. [self.locationManager setPausesLocationUpdatesAutomatically:NO];

After all this above mentioned steps we are not able to get locations after some time. Any help will be appreciated. We dont want to use monitor significant changes as we want location update after every certain intervals with good accuracy.

Please let me know what can we to make our app work in background continuously.

P.S. :- Our app also requires the location update even if app is killed by user.

Thanks in advance. :-)

Hi Karela,
I do have the same problem. I have been trying from many days. Could you please share the code so that it will helpful to me.

Code Block language
locationManager.allowsBackgroundLocationUpdates = true

Code Block 
   func setUp(){
    Logger.log(classC: className, method: "setup", status: "Ok")
    manager?.desiredAccuracy = kCLLocationAccuracyBestForNavigation
    manager?.allowsBackgroundLocationUpdates = true
    manager?.activityType = .otherNavigation
    manager?.pausesLocationUpdatesAutomatically = false
    manager?.desiredAccuracy = kCLLocationAccuracyNearestTenMeters
     
   
  }
   

Code Block 
func monitorRegionAtLocation(identifier: String ) {
     
     
    if CLLocationManager.isMonitoringAvailable(for: CLCircularRegion.self) {
      let maxDistance = 100.0
       
      guard let manager = manager else {return}
      guard let location = manager.location else {return}
       
      let coordinate2d = location.coordinate
      let region = CLCircularRegion(center: coordinate2d,
         radius: maxDistance, identifier: identifier)
      region.notifyOnEntry = true
      region.notifyOnExit = true
       
     
      manager.startMonitoring(for: region)
    }
  }

Code Block 
     Logger.log(classC: className, method: "startMonitoring", status: "Ok")
    guard let manager = manager else {return}
     
 
      manager.startUpdatingLocation()
      manager.startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges()
      monitorRegionAtLocation(identifier: "Home")
       
  }

Code Block 
   func locationManager(_ manager: CLLocationManager, didEnterRegion region: CLRegion) {
    startMonitoring()
    lookUpCurrentLocation()
    checkLastDateSent(method: "didEnterRegion")
     
  }
   
  func locationManager(_ manager: CLLocationManager, didExitRegion region: CLRegion) {
    startMonitoring()
    lookUpCurrentLocation()
    checkLastDateSent(method: "didExitRegion")
  }

Code Block 
   func lookUpCurrentLocation(){
    Logger.log(classC: className, method: "lookUpCurrentLocation", status: "Ok")
    guard let manager = manager else {
      Logger.log(classC: className, method: "lookUpCurrentLocation", status: "location manager is null")
      return
       
    }
     
    let lastLocation = manager.location
    if let lastLocation = lastLocation {
      currentLoc["accuracy"] = lastLocation.horizontalAccuracy
         
      currentLoc["latitude"] = lastLocation.coordinate.latitude
      currentLoc["longitude"] = lastLocation.coordinate.longitude
      if let listener = listener {
        listener.currentLocation(location : currentLoc )
      }else{
        Logger.log(classC: className, method: "lookUpCurrentLocation", status: "location listener is null")
      }
    }else{
      Logger.log(classC: className, method: "lookUpCurrentLocation", status: "could not get last location")
    }
   
  
  }

@gpstracker did you find any solution for this?