Geofencing problems with iOS15.01

@André2859

I have the same issue since I upgraded to 15.01. My geofencing is not working anymore for my Mobilinc HD app. I can no longer trust my Iphone to send signal to my Automated home system to lock the doors and shut off the lights. My other Iphone on IOS 14 is still working fine.

Update 19-12-2021: I've since my last post, at Dec 15th, the IFTTT App in the background and it works now. Didn't close or restart the IFTTT app for thee days. IFTTT with applet for Tahoma works fine at the moment.

before IOS 15 fully closed apps had no issues with geofencing, it just worked. Homekit app can be full closed and still works as expected, geofencing always works. I tried some apps to be left open in the background and some apps work some wont. Just to share info, Tado has given a reply on their forum: Hello,

With iOS 15.1, Apple finally fixed their app-closing ability.

This came at a cost.

Customers could close the app (swipe) before and the app would continue to run in the background, and would still be sending data (even though it was closed).

With iOS 15.1, the app that is closed in the background is closed completely. It stops sharing any data. It is important that the tado° app is running in the background.

Closing the tado° app will make it so the tado° app doesn't receive updates.

The problem is that I as the user have no control about what app is closed by the OS because of memory needed etc.

This change renders all "smart" apps or products useless, if I have to manually open or keep open apps.

This can only be a bug, not feature. Or otherwise why would Apple give us the option to let an app use our location "always" if that would in fact only mean "while app is open".

I agree that the current implementation is not satisfactory. In my case, I use a geofence on both my phone and my wife’s to tell OrchMobiLinc that we are BOTH not home, and therefore should set the house to AWAY mode. There’s no way I can ensure the app is running on both phones each and every time one of leaves.

Beside that, it’s still not clear to me that the function works 100% even with the app open.

Same issue here. Me and my wife have Iphone 13, out of the box running on IOS 15.2.

we use geofencing on our Honeywell home App, for our thermostat T6. Location is set to « always » and background app is allowed. It is not triggering the geofence location unless we open the honeywell app. Also we have a lot of issues with our GPS not updating so easily. Per example on apple carplay, we need to unplug and plug back to have the gps refresh our location…

hope this gets fixed soon… never had these issues on my galaxy S10!

All, I just set up a workaround on my partners 12 Mini running 15.2:

- open the "Shortcuts" app

- press back to get to the homepage

- create a new "automation" that is triggered by arriving at required location, and make it open relevant app. Set the location size ring to be about the same size as your geofence size for whatever app youre using

-Create another automation for leaving required location, again to open the relevant app with the appropriate location ring

That will now open the app automatically (in my case Smartthings) to enable triggering of location based automation,which works because the app is foreground even if screen is off. Have just confirmed that this works outbound and inbound, have finally got her phone to trigger my heating.

Obviously this is a short term fix until Apple fix what is clearly a bug. For a long term fix I recommend Android!

It would seem to have "fixed" the issue I was experiencing with the geofencing issues and my Nest App. However, my IFTTT app and it's location-based routines, did NOT work today as they had been for the past month after I updated my iOS. I'm still experiencing intermittent issues with my August locks and location-based routines via Amazon Alexa still do NOT work. Very frustrating and hoping that iOS 15.3 alleviates these geo-fencing issues, since I cannot seem to get any remedy through either Apple support or any of these third-party device manufactures to fix this issue.

my wife and I have installed the IOS 15.3 on our Iphone 13. It looks like my Geofencing is now functioning as intended , on our Honeywell home app. Before, it seemed like it was a background location sharing issue, as the geofencing would update our locations only when we opened the app. Today, everything updated itself without opening the app... This is giving me hope.

Hope it stays like that!

Hi,

I have the same issue. Some apps work and some don’t. After restarting, resetting and reinstalling things an app may or may not work with Geofencing always on. If it does sometimes stops working.

Small side note is that Google Home always works but none of the other apps. iComfort, Arlo, Smartthings. Etc

very frustrating.

I find it curious and sad that Apple, as far as I know, never acknowledged or even mentioned this geofencing issue in any writing available to the public. If there is anything actually out there than do tell! The release notes for 13.5 only state that there ARE NO release notes! Why would Apple want to try and hide it under the rug by using the...if we don't say anything it never happened...method of subterfuge? You would think geofencing would be important enough to mention so sorry but I can't help but think bad things when no info is released.

I was affected with my Honeywell Home app geofencing, while my Arlo app had no issues. I would love to know why some apps geofencing broke and others didn't. You would think there would be one standard routine in an API for retrieving geolocation data, but apparently it looks like there must be more than one way to do it.

BTW, I upgraded to the new 15.3.1 release that just came out and geofencing is still working properly so knock on wood it stays that way. :-)

I'm on iOS 15.3.1 and the issue still persists.

I actually held off on updating to iOS 15 until about a month or two ago, and expected that by the 2nd major update to iOS 15 that these bugs would be worked out. The fact that it isn't and that this has become a common trend with Apple makes me regret ever buying an iPhone. I wouldn't be having this issue on Android right now.

Most of us are reporting the geofencing issues have been fixed with 15.3. What apps are still having issues? I would ask the developers of those apps for an update to find out if it is still iOS that's the problem or the apps themselves because for most of us 15.3 did fix the problem.

For me, it's the Hue app. I've had it work once in the last 3 days. Android Hue users don't seem to be reporting this issue. I have no doubt the situation is better for a lot of users, but I have a 1st Gen iPhone SE, and I know we've gotten shafted a few times in the past with bugs that have plagued us far more than others with more modern phones.

We have many users affected by this issue and restarting the device did not help everyone. The issue persists even after restart.