Something I also noticed: my daughter puts her iPhone often in the energy saving mode. If so, then the location update doesn’t work properly.
I think it may be related to nabu casa setup in the ios app. I just enabled a cloud connect option in the app (though it still seemed to want an external URL entered, which I tried to enter the nabu url, but it rejected that).
Anyway I’ll see how it goes with the cloud remote UI option selected.
I think this is by design (by Apple): Fewer GPS updates save battery. The app can only respond to that.
I’ve struggled with the cloud settings too where it didn’t populate the field automatically. I just kept trying by going to the website and enabling the remote option from there and then eventually it got set up. Luckily, that hasn’t happened again recently (it once just lost the URL that was configured).
I experienced also this location update issue. What I found in the logs in the assistant app on my iPhone was that the app was unable to update its location because the “ location info was too old”.
I changed my internal url to the url I also use for external connection, then deleted and reinstalled the app so that everything gets imported again from the settings/server. And voila, it worked.
Definately something that needs a fix sometime.
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Good to hear you made progress and that there is hope. I suspect the problem may be the same at my place having had some issues with connection strings already (after a nabu casa trial period). I am now a paying customer of nabu casa and am connecting through cloud when not home. But my connection settings seem off as both external and internal url is listed as my internal one. What did you use as external url? And are you a nabu casa customer?
Yes, I figured out that I have to use a dynamic IP address service to access my account rather than using an internal IP address. I’m using the duckdns.org add-on.
I got the location update function working and it has been working for a couple of days now. I have read in another discussion, that the issue might be related to Spaces in the iPhone’s name. My wife’s iPhone Update was always working and her phone’s name is ‘iPhone’. My phone was called ‘Hans’s iPhone’. I now changed the name of my iPhone to ‘iPhoneH’ and now the location update works.
I am not entirely sure, if this new name really resolved the issue or if it just helped Home Assistant to re-create the Integration and this solved the issue. I will monitor the situation, but you guys might wanna try renaming your phone and see if it helps.
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mine has only one name (without spaces!) but stille have the issue…
it works for 2 days… after that I have to open and close the app
is there a fix for this ?
did you get this to work?
Hey, I had the same issues recently…and it seems like it was related to a capital letter on iPhone name. changing that worked for me at least, even with spaces in iPhone name
I am also having this issue, tried all of the above suggestions, no luck. I am in the middle of getting off of SmartThings. Cannot to the full cut-over until I can get the location based automations working.
Alright, so this is working for me now, but I dont think I did anything special. I removed the devices. Restarted. Removed the apps from the phones, reinstalled the apps and now it just works.
Not really that helpful, but I guess you can always try to remove everything and set it up again.
Changing the name as a name override in Home Assistant? Or the actual name on the phone itself?
I was struggeling with the same issue, but where to start troubleshooting? Being a newbie using Home Assistant I was wondering where the location data should be delivered.
So basically there are two possibilities: A. make use of Home Assistant Cloud Service or B. make your Home Assistant instance available through the internet. Location data is sent directly from the mobile device to either A or B. To complete this, make sure your Home Assistant companion app is set up with the right permissions (location services) and Connection section is pointing to your URL or Home Assistant cloud service.
In my case I made Home Assistant available via the internet using an A record DNS entry on my domainname so it became: http://homeassistant.mydomain.com:8123 but you can also use a free dynamic DNS service available on the internet.
I hope this info is usefull, my thought was that it is just one of the things to start of with.
Edit: I expected a kind of real-time updates but for now I think it doesn’t work that way. What I did was to add zones to be able to see where we all are.
Since I started using the iOS app a month or so ago it has never reliably updated on either my iPhone or my wife’s iPhone. Settings are all correct, but each time I go to check the app it looks like it’s launching for the first time - which probably explains why it hasn’t been updating in the background. It usually then continues to update location/sensors for a few hours but then stops again. I’ve tried reinstalling them both etc, but always the same end result. Would love to get this fixed, especially now that I’m paying for the cloud service.
hey @Olie out of curiosity, could you check in your Home Assistant app in the App Configuration menu underneath: General > Device Name, if the name of the device has any quotes in it?
Silly as it seems, when I changed to a new name there that is just 1 word, things started working again.
It was blank, so using default “Olie’s iPhone” name. I’ve set a one-word name and will see if that improves things.
Other thing I noticed, somehow the Location setting for Home Assistant ( so iPhone settings, scroll in the apps and select Home Assistant ) was set to While using the App instead of Always. On my phone it now stays correct, but somehow on my wife’s iPhone this keeps reverting to While using the app. Still need to digg deeper when or how.
Thanks - I just double-checked and mine was set to Always but my wife’s was back to While Using the App, so worth keeping an eye on. I think iOS bugs you every now and again to say ‘this app has been using your location in the background - do you want to continue allowing it?’, or similar, and maybe it’s been accidentally disabled because of that.
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