How to fix location based reminders and find my friends alerts.

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Level 1

8 points

How to fix location based reminders and find my friends alerts.

A lot of people have had issues getting location based reminders to work properly. If you are one of the affected, here is the solution.

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.

Posted on Oct 7, 2013 10:46 AM

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Answer 1

abw5 Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 10, 2013 10:54 PM in response to abw5

I would like users that are experiencing issues with find my friends or reminders alerts (location-based) to contribute to this discussion. More importantly, the discussion will benefit greatly from the input of users willing to see this to the end. Submit your bug report, as I have, but come back here to figure it out. Who knows when an update will be released.

The more information the better. What device are you using? Which iOS version do you run (probably 7)? When did you first experience the issue (probably after updating to 7)? How often do you use the services we are concerned about? Have you found something that works, albeit temporarily? What is your behavior with the services? What have you turned off and what have you left alone in settings? Which carrier have you sold your soul to? etc, etc, etc. All rational questions.

Please have patience, curiosity, and a desire to help others. Like I said earlier, my iOS services are running as they should (actually, i have some other issues, but let us keep this strictly to location based services). We can get there. I have friends at the apple store and anything we find will be reported to them. Also, I have a lot of apple fan boys in my degree at school. Let's do this.

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Answer 2

abw5 Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 10, 2013 10:54 PM in response to abw5

Allow me to list my settings and the changes I have made to my settings since applying the fix.

These are the apps that have access to my location:

Camera, Chrome, Find Friends, Maps, Passbook, Reminders, Siri, TWC (the weather channel), Waze, Weather, and Find My iPhone. That is actually all the apps in my location services list currently. The underlined apps are native.

I have disabled these system services from accessing my location:

Diagnostic and Usage, Location-Based iAds, and Popular Near Me.

I allow these system services to access my location:

Cell Network Search, Compass Calibration, Setting Time Zone, Traffic, Wi-Fi Networking, and Frequent Locations (although I chose not to Improve Maps in Frequent Locations).

Reminders is the only app that has Background App Refresh on.

My Reminders settings:

Sync Reminders 1 Month Back.

Default List is Reminder.

My Notification Center settings for Reminders and Find My Friends:

Alert Style - Alerts

Badge App Icon - on

Reminder Alerts - Signal

Alerts Show in Notification Center

Include 5 Lines

Show on Lock Screen - on

I only use Siri to make reminders.

Before doing the DFU restore, I backed up my iPhone to iCloud. I don't normally use iCloud because I only have 5GB, but this time I did so I could restore from iCloud after the DFU restore. I did not setup my iPhone as new.

Other fix suggestions that I have implemented on my iPhone are:

Disabling Reminders syncing with my exchange e-mail account. Only my iCloud e-mail account syncs Reminders now. I have two other gmail accounts that do not have the option for Reminders syncing. I did this soon after iOS 7 came out. It did not fix the issue, but may be part of the final solution.

As of now, that is all I can think of. If you have the time, please provide your settings and behaviors. Maybe we will be able to find a link that will help others. If there is a setting I did not provide that you think may be important, please indicate.

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Answer 3

Oct 11, 2013 8:06 AM in response to abw5

I can attest to the fact that abw5 has provided a solution to get location based reminders working again. Since this is a bug in the OS each iPhone may react a little bit differently. In my case the Reset Location and Privacy worked perfectly in forcing the location based reminders to work again without the Reminders app running in the foreground or the background. However, on my iPhone the fix is broken 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")

Since this is a bug I believe that each individual iPhone will react slightly different to the fix. But the fix provided here did fix the issue as long as I don't turn off any of the "System Services"

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