Q: iOS 7 Location Based Reminders aren't working

That is not how location based reminders should work. Here is the way to make it work as before.

Solution: Navigate to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Location and Privacy.

              After resetting location and privacy, ask Siri to remind you to do something when you arrive to (or leave from) a known location. Siri will ask you to give her permission to access your location. Once you have done so, ask Siri to remind you to do something when you arrive to (or leave from) a known location. Siri will then ask you to allow reminders to access your location. Once you have done so, location based reminders should work.

Reminders does not need to be open to get alerts.

Should fix Find My Friends notifications as well.

Allow Reminders to run in background.

I've done all that, but still location-based reminders don't work unless the Reminders app is open.

This worked for a while, however, as soon as I went in to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > and turned off some of the superfluous settings, location based Reminders stopped working again. I'm going to do some trouble shooting to figure out which one of the System Services is causing it to disable location based reminders. I will check back in with my findings.

abw5 wrote:

 

That is not how location based reminders should work. Here is the way to make it work as before.

 

Solution: Navigate to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Location and Privacy.

              After resetting location and privacy, ask Siri to remind you to do something when you arrive to (or leave from) a known location. Siri will ask you to give her permission to access your location. Once you have done so, ask Siri to remind you to do something when you arrive to (or leave from) a known location. Siri will then ask you to allow reminders to access your location. Once you have done so, location based reminders should work.

 

Reminders does not need to be open to get alerts.

Should fix Find My Friends notifications as well.

Allow Reminders to run in background.

Solution: Navigate to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Location and Privacy.

Unfortunately this is a temporary fix for some people. If you turn off anything in System Services it may revert back to not working.

The  only other work around at this time is to launch Reminders and leave it running in the background.

There ia a much larger discussion on this issue here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5329723?start=45&tstart=0

Apple technical issues only come to light when people put in bug reports. You can put one in here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

After doing the reset, Reminders started working normally.  It has been a few days since, and I am happy to report that Reminders and Find My Friends alerts are working as they should without the apps being open in the foreground or background.  My intentions are not to gloat, but to help those that are willing to go through the process of troubleshooting their device.  I know, I know. Everyone has tried everything.  Let's look at our devices, make some changes, and report back the results.  If we get a group large enough doing the exact same steps, it shouldn't be long before we get everyone's Reminders up and running.  If you are willing to explore, you can jump to my discussion about this, or stay here and talk.  This was very frustrating for me, and I can only imagine it is that much more upsetting for the rest.  My discussion board on this topic is: HTTPS://discussions.apple.com/message/23321823#23321823

Let me reiterate, I don't care which board we talk on.  I just want it to be with active users.  I really think we can solve this.

abw5,

Thanks for trying to help.

Even after the steps you provide, your location-based reminders will stop firing once you have explicitly terminated the Reminders app. That is, once you have run the following steps:

1. Open the Reminders app.

2. Double press the Home button to bring up the App Switcher.

3. Swipe out Reminders from the App Switcher.

At this stage, Reminders will be neither in the foreground nor in the background and location-based reminders won't fire.

This behavior is in line with the information available in the support.apple.com articles referenced earlier in this discusion.

laurenfromcupertino,

I found that the fix provided by abw5 works perfectly even when the Reminder app is closed and not running in the background. I tested it over 4 days without ever having Reminders running either in the foreground or background and I would receive location-based notifications upon arriving or leaving set locations.

The only think that breaks the fix provided by abw5 (on my iPhone) in my many hours of trouble shooting is if I go to: Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > and turned off any single service (NOT including "Cell Network Search" "Wi-Fi Networking", "Frequent locations" or "Traffic")

Laurenfromcupertino,

It's been over a week and all my reminders are still alerting me at their paired locations.  I have disabled a few services as outlined in my earlier post. I would love to know what I have done different from other affected users.

laurentfromcupertino,

Assuming this is a bug, various users are going to have different experiences when applying this fix. To me the fact that results are so varied, ie: it works perfectly for some, not at all for others, and in my case works until I make a change to an unrelated System Service, bolsters my assumption that this is a bug and not expected behavior in iOS 7. Now, looking at it from the perspective that Reminders needs to be running in order for location based reminders to work, then I would say that there is still a bug in iOS 7 if users are able to override this by resetting Location and Privacy. Bottom line no matter which line of thinking you subscribe to its a bug.

Hi Abw5,

I think that, in your case, Reminders is suspended in the background (although possibly not visible in the App Switcher).

I would expect your location-based reminders to stop functioning after you execute the steps I provided above, which are the following:

1. Open the Reminders app.

2. Double press the Home button to bring up the App Switcher.

3. Swipe out Reminders from the App Switcher.

At this stage, Reminders will be neither in the foreground nor in the background and location-based reminders are not expected fire.

I called apple support and asked for assistance getting location based reminders to work on my 5s.  I talked with a supervisor and he escalated my request to engineering.  This was 2 days ago and I just received a call from the support person who took escalated my request.  The answer he received from engineering is that location based reminders now does not function as it did on ios 6.  You will have to leave reminders active for an alert.  No longer will we get reminder alerts if the app is closed.  I've sent my input to apple support a few ago voicing my displeasure with this change in functionality from ios 6 to ios 7.  I hope you will also send your comments to apple support.  IF they don't change this I will be moving to android with next phone upgrade.

This worked for both of my iPhones (5 & 5s)

Go to Settings - General - Reset

Press "Reset Location & Privacy"

Establish a Location based reminder using Siri

Siri will tell you that you need to enable reminders in "Settings - Privacy - Location Services"

Once Reminders is enabled return to Siri and establish a Location based reminder.  You should see the hollow arrow geofence graphic in top information bar.  Your reminder should fire as in ios 6 now.

Over several days of setting reminders to alert when "arriving/departing home or work" the alerts have become more precise...meaning instead of alerting within a half mile of destination/departure point the reminder alerts more like 3 to 500 ft. of the destination/departure point.

IF you open the reminder app you will have to repeat the above process.  I've put the reminder app in a folder with other system apps I don't use and pushed it to my back page.  I just don't use the reminder app now.

This also worked for both of my iPhones (5 & 5s) however in my case the app doesn't have to be open in the background...

Go to Settings - General - Reset

Press "Reset Location & Privacy"

Establish a Location based reminder using Siri

Siri will tell you that you need to enable reminders in "Settings - Privacy - Location Services"

Once Reminders is enabled return to Siri and establish a Location based reminder.  You should see the hollow arrow geofence graphic in top information bar.  Your reminder should fire as in ios 6 now.

Over several days of setting reminders to alert when "arriving/departing home or work" the alerts have become more precise...meaning instead of alerting within a half mile of destination/departure point the reminder alerts more like 3 to 500 ft. of the destination/departure point.

IF you open the reminder app you will have to repeat the above process.  I've put the reminder app in a folder with other system apps I don't use and pushed it to my back page.  I just don't use the reminder app now.

I find that abw5's suggestion of resetting locations and privacy greatly improved the probability of location-based reminders working while the phone is asleep.

I'm not at all certain, but I *may* be seeing evidence to suggest that the location has to have a name associated with it, such as in Maps.  That doesn't seem plausible, so I doubt it, buuuut:  My on-going-maintained grocery list I have put into a location-based reminder, so that it will remind me what to buy as I approach my favorite grocery store.  That grocery store, for whatever reason, Maps doesn't know about by name.  So, I went to that physical location and tied the reminder to my exact GPS coordinates at that time.  I'm finding somewhat inconsistent results as to whether the reminder will go off or not as I approach that location.  However, Maps does know where home is, and when I tie a reminder to home, it does seem to go off consistently every time.  I'm switching that reminder over to another store very close to it to see if reminders come more consistently.

Aaaaah!  Nevermind!  A far-more-logical explanation just popped into mind: Most likely what is reliably triggering reminders tied to home is detecting our home Wi-Fi.  "Ah, here's a new WiFi network...  Ah, I know that one;  better update our location...  Oh wait!  I have a reminder connected to that location!"