location based reminders don't work in ios7 ?

I didn't change anything.. and yes i deleted all reminder groups and just left the defualt one..

@klahane.. i force quit reminders as i do with all my apps running in the background, to save battery life.. so if i set up a location based reminder and i close the app, im done.. no reminder unless i happen to open the app while im at the location the reminder was set for.. lol makes no sense..

Do you use Siri to make reminders?

yes i do.. but now i just started to type it in the app myself.. i just pray to god i dont close the app in the background lol...

I think the issue at hand here, be it using Reminders with Siri or straight through the app, is that a core feature of the operating system can be easily floundered if a user "carelessly" slides up on the Reminders app while in the multitasking view.

May I pose a hypothetical? What if the same thing happened with calendar alerts? Would people be saying, "yes, so why are you closing the calendar app if you want it to go off?"

Also, with iCloud, it is entirely possible a user created a reminder on another device. Then, they cannot be "blamed" for not having Reminders open, since they may not even remember it was created, hence, a reminder. As a result, it will not work, and the user will rightfully blame Apple software for missing their reminder.

Whether it "works as designed" or not, it is a bug.

It is definitely a bug. In regards to using Siri to make reminders, the reminders app doesn't actually open when you use siri.

No arguments from me. I was just trying to understand how the problem arises. I was able to duplicate the lack of location-based reminders after deliberately killing Reminders. It seems as if this should work as it did in iOS 6.

the few times i actually do tell siri to remind me of something the app never opens.. i would have to go into the reminder app just so it can start running in the background and recieve that location based reminder..

@Klahane: I completely agree. It should work as it did in iOS 6. Once they got it reliable on that OS, it was great. The new multitasking concepts (based entirely on user control on what runs and what doesn't), will expand what developers can do, but has serious issues such as this.

Basically, in iOS 6, an app could "run" in the background outside of the multitasking bar (with no easy way for the user to know which are running). Now, in iOS 7, all apps that are running in the background show up in the multitasking list, and if they're not there, they aren't running...at all.

Since some core features still actually run in the background (calendar alerts, e-mail checking, app updates, time zone updates, traffic data analysis, etc.), location based reminders should be added to that core list. This would solve our issues entirely.

see my reply here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5358139?start=30&tstart=0

I got mine working. Outlined arrow in the status bar without Reminders being open.

Never mind, it worked at first but then it went back to not working. But it DID work.

I got it to work go to settings then general then background app refresh make sure it is on make sure reminders is on and turn off the ones you don't need as they will drain the battery life and leave reminders running in the background this will work also try with out reminders in the background but not 100% if works with out reminders in the background will try tomorrow but with it on works

umparrothead, Good find! Did you include a link to that in a bug report?

I though I would inlcude my testing expereince in here for whoever is curious. Some users discussing in the forum have "solved" the issue through the 'Reset Location & Privacy’ option. In my personal experience with my iPhone 5, I have found that this solution works with limited success. Here are the steps which I have taken to test it:

1. I close all apps in the multitasking interface.
2. I 'Reset Location & Privacy’ and then immediately ask Siri to make a location based reminder.
3. I tap on the button within the Siri interface to reach the location services permission panel.
4. I allow Reminders to access location.
5. I call up Siri again and make a location based reminder and confirm it (the geofencing icon immediately appears in the upper right corner of the screen).
6. Using my bicycle, I tested the geofence of the reminder and it I was notified upon leaving my home (normal functioning).
7. Being well outside of the geofence around my home, I open the ‘Reminders' app, check off the reminder and create a new geofence reminder within the app to remind me upon arriving at home (the geofencing icon remains displayed).
8. I return to the home screen and sleep the iPhone.
9. I arrive at home and check the iPhone lock screen for a notification which it has (again, functioning normally).
10. I open the ‘Reminders’ app and check off the reminder.
11. I close the ‘Reminders’ app from the multitasking interface (geofencing icon disappears).
12. I ask Siri to remind me upon leaving my home and confirm (no geofencing icon appears).
13. I exit the geofenced area around my home, but receive no reminder notifications.
14. I open the ‘Reminders’ app (geofencing icon appears), delete the reminder, create a new reminder to notify me when I arrive at home, and close the app from the multitasking interface (geofencing icon disappears).
15. Upon returning home within the geofenced area, I DO NOT receive a notification

I have repeated this process multiple times with the same result. Let me know if you have any questions.

Hi. I'm an iPhone Developer. I don't work for Apple. But I do write popular apps in the App Store. I'm telling you this so that you have some idea that I know what I'm talking about.

There is way too much misinformation in this thread, and there are people complaining about things that are expected and normal behavior. There might be one or two bugs being reported as well, it's hard to say.

So anyway. Here's the short version: there is no setting you can tweak, no action you can do, that saves your battery life with zero impact to your experience. Think about it: if you could get a big improvement in battery life by turning off Background Refresh and nothing bad happened, Apple would do that by default. They don't. This is because these settings do stuff you want.

So when you go flipity-flip through Settings.app and start disabling stuff, you're disabling important stuff. That is why these settings save battery life--because they turn features off. Less features means less work for your battery to do. That's how it works.

There are two features that affect location-based Reminders.

• Background Refresh. Yes, having Background Refresh on drains your battery faster. You know why? Cause it's giving you location-based reminders. That is, more or less, what this switch does. Location-based reminders require this special high-power mode. If you don't allow the app to run in this high-power state, you can't get location-based reminders. Period, end of story.
  So why are people complaining about this now? Well, this switch didn't exist in iOS 6. For the purposes of Reminders.app, it was just always on. Now that people can turn it off, they do turn it off, and complain that it breaks things. Well, stop turning it off! If there is a bug here, it is the fact that there is a switch here in the first place. Arguably it should be invisible and always turned on the way it was in iOS 6.
• The multitasker. Basically, when you close an app by doubletapping Home and swiping up (not just pressing Home, that is fine), you are saying that you don't like this app. That the app should not be allowed to use any more battery. So, fine, ok. You don't want Reminders to use any battery? Fine. You won't get location-based reminders. That's the tradeoff. You cannot say "Don't use any battery but oh, by the way, power up my GPS occasionally to see if I'm near home." No. You told it not to use your battery for Reminders and it listened to you.
  So why are people just complaining about this now? Well, in iOS 6, closing apps in the multitasker didn't really do much. It was sort of a placebo effect. It did a little; but think of it much more like a vague suggestion than a command. Apps would disappear from the list, but they would still continue to run, using about as much battery life as before, just invisibly. So people who adopted the habit of killing apps in iOS 6 were doing it, almost, for zero benefit.
  Now in iOS 7, removing apps from the list actually, you know, quits them, about like you'd expect. And they stay dead. You know, like you'd expect. And you don't get location-based reminders. You know, like you'd expect from a dead Reminders app.

If you remember nothing from this rant, remember this: you can't cheat your way to better battery life. Every action you take to "save" battery life has a consequence. If it actually works, it disables things. When you quit apps in the multitasker, you're disabling things. When you turn off Background Refresh, you're disabling things. The reason turning off these things does save battery life is because it turns off power-hungry features like location-based reminders. So if you want power-hungry features like location-based reminders to actually work, then stop disabling them.

If there are one or two third-party apps that you don't use much, then feel free to quit them in the multitasker or disable their background refresh. That is what it's for--to degrade the features on apps that you don't care about. But don't do it willy-nilly all over the place trying to outsmart iOS at battery management. You will disable things. And your battery life probably won't improve much.

compaqdrew,

Thank you for pointing out all of this information. I actually learned a lot from your post. Overall, I understand and agree with your arguments, however I think there is still some room for discussion.

While many people are trying to save battery by disabling features critical to app functionality, this is not the only source of the complaint. There are many other reasons someone may want to remove apps from the multitasker. The best example I have of this is when you are working between a few different apps and would rather avoid distractions from other apps in the multitasker. Someone might go ahead and inadvertently close an app with a critical background functionality, like Reminders. Another example might be when you experience significant lag or poor performance and don’t know which app is causing it, so you quit all of them. It should not be up to the user to remember to reopen the Reminders app to receive their location-based reminders.

Another problem I have with this design is that Siri will confirm a location-based reminder even if the Reminders app is not allowed to run in the background or is not currently in the multitasker.

Therefore, I believe that Apple engineers failed to test these use cases thoroughly, and subsequently failed to include location-based reminders as part of the underlying system processes (outside of user control) that use location information.

Please let us know your thoughts on this.

On the "siri shouldn't confirm reminders if they won't actually happen", I agree with you, this is a bug. Siri should either complain in this case, or silently re-enable whatever you disabled. I filed this through a developer channel.

I can tell you why this happened, though. People have complained over the years that non-system apps (think like what OmniFocus is to Reminders, or what Google Maps is to Maps) don't have the same level of "built-in-ness" that the system apps do. The result of this feedback is that Apple has made more system-level privileges available to third-party apps so that they can have more feature parity with system apps. Rightly or wrongly, the decision was made to let the user edit some of these permissions (like Background App Refresh) because perhaps you don't want to use Reminders, or you want to use OmniFocus instead. Meanwhile Siri is just inserting reminders into a database without a lot of awareness of whether it's OmniFocus or Reminders that will ultimately process them, or whether they're running or have the right permissions. That's how we got here.

On the multitasker behavior, this is debatable. Specifically, there is a dispute about what this multitasker is good for.

• Does it exist primarily to let you switch between applications?
• Does it exist primarily to show you apps that are running and allow you to quit them?

Arguably, people use it as both, and arguably there is a lot of overlap between these two things. But there are sometimes where these ideas don't overlap, and so you have to make a judgment call about whether to design it for one case or othe other.

I think when you are in that situation (where you must do one at the expense of the other), you should favor the displaying and quitting of running apps. This is because:

• There are other ways to switch between applications, like arranging them on your home screen and tapping their icon or using Siri. There's no other way to quit apps.
• If your goal is to scan and find some application to launch, these other interfaces are way better and more productive. The multitasker is really only good for switching to an app in the five or so that you've recently used. It doesn't order them consistently; there's no muscle-memory; you have to make a lot of gestures to even view the app you're looking for, etc. It's just not a good interface for looking for apps you used several days ago.
• Having a lot of apps in the list doesn't really matter for the task switching case, because we've already established that you're only using the first five. The fact that Reminders appears way over to the right in the list doesn't really impact the usability of the task switching behavior, so it does you no harm to leave it open. The only reason that Reminders would appear near the front of the list is if you opened it recently, and in that case it's even more logical to display it in the list.

So for those reasons, I think that the multitasker behaves better in iOS 7 than it did in 6. It's really only good for switching between a few recent apps, so there's no harm in letting the list grow quite long.

Finally, I would say something similar to what I said earlier about the Background Refresh feature. There is some desire here to let the user use third-party apps for reminders. What you call a "critical system service" is another person's "how do I turn this off?"

I can't tell you how many thousands of complaints I've gotten that "Reminders works in the background... why can't your app?" And I have to explain that it's because Reminders (and Maps, and Phone, and ...) all have Secret Voodoo Powers that no third-party developer can do. In iOS 7, we've taken a step towards leveling the playing field and making first-party and third-party apps behave more similarly.

For example, people in this thread have learned for the first time that quitting Reminders stops it from working. Maybe now they will learn that quitting the apps that I write stops those apps from working too instead of expecting them to magically continue to work. Being consistent about stuff like that for first-party and third-party apps sets much more realistic expectations about what third-party apps can and can't do. If users quit Reminders and it still works, then they start expecting that same behavior for OmniFocus and Evernote and Things and they try all of them and leave a string of 1-star reviews in their wake complaining that none of these apps behave like Reminders does.