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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Hi there i have the same issue My HA map is showing that i’m constantly at home and is not updating my location but iOS is poping up message: "this app has been using your location in the background - do you want to continue allowing it?’ i click “Allow” but no improvement HA still thinks i’m constantly at home even if i’m 50 miles away. i’ve tried everything please help
Can you confirm that you can reach your HA instance when you’re not on your home network so that it can receive location updates?
Yep i’m using DuckDNS
There are some dependencies that must also be properly configured on the mobile device. Check App configuration and then your own profile. There should be settings for Internal URL and External URL. Furthermore, for determining your location, you depend on whether your device can use data over the mobile network and / or whether you are connected to a Wifi Access point.
By defining zones you can also map yourself better to the location.
Hi to all,
my iphone has stopped to update my current location via the HA App. I double checked all configurations and of course the app is allowed to track my location. I really don’t know what else I can try. My wifes Iphone works well. My phone runs under ios 14.2
Does anybody know what to do?
Hello,
My updates was fine until I needed to revert to a old snapshot. after this I didnt got it working properly again.
I went over to icloud and that seems to work better and I can use the find-my-iphone sound that I need every now and then…
Do you foresee any risks (security) with the cloud services?
I tried iCloud some years ago and couldn’t see any risks. Location update on companion app was very good, but for no reasons it stopped working and I can not figure out, why it does so. It is only happend to my iphone. It works fine on my wifes iphone.
Oh by the way. My phone send my current location with this entity:
sensor.iphone_geocoded_location
And inside this entity the zone is correct: Home.
But entity device_tracker.iphone still shows not_home
Is this still an unresolved issue? I’m having the same problem and can’t get around it 
Mine only seems to update when on wifi (using the internal URL) - may be an issue with my reverse proxy authentication perhaps
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This issue has recently cropped up for me, very annoying. My work around was to use sensor._geocoded_location and sensor._SSID and built baysean sensor off that. Works well now but missing the proximity sensor that I was using.