IOS Companion App Location Updates are Really Slow (or Latest Proximity Integration is Broken)

Hi.

I’m not exactly sure whether this post belongs in the Companion App section or the Proximity integration section, so I’ll start here and the moderator can move it where he/she deems appropriate.

I have an automation that notifies me whenever I enter my housing subdivision. The GeoFence is set for 400 meters (roughly 1200 feet) from the House. Originally, I was using a proximity sensor ("proximity.xxxx’), that was defined in my configuration file. It was set to notify me whenever I crossed the GeoFence . This was working great…until the proximity integration changed, and that proximity sensor was deprecated.

Using the new proximity integration, the automation is set to notify me when ‘sensor.home_xxxx_distance’ is now below 1600 feet. (No idea why it suddenly started to use feet instead of meters, but that’s irrelevant.) Given this new GeoFence is set WAY beyond my subdivision’s boundary, it should trigger well before I arrive at the subdivision…except it doesn’t. Now, it only seems to trigger just before I drive up my driveway. So, something has changed.

While I’m reluctant to instantly blame the new proximity integration, the change in behavior is suspiciously coincidental. Logically, it seems like the phone not reporting location changes in a timely manner, except that it was working previously, and nothing has changed with those settings (unless an IOS update subtlety changed something in the background).

The Companion App is running on an iPhone 14 Pro, under IOS 17.3.1 (the latest as of mid-Feb 2023). Use Exact Location is enabled, and I’m using the Nabu Casa cloud services.

Any thoughts on what may be causing this, or has anyone else seen a similar change in behavior?

Started testing HA on 2020, played with test devices like iPhone 5S, 6S+ (iOS 12.x), iPad Air 2 (iOS 15.x).
Observed that very often data from Mobile App for these devices are not updated for a long time.
Usually had to open Companion App on a device to see an update in HA; sometimes this did not help - had to press “update location” in the App.
And sometimes the link between HA & Companion App like “wake up” and update data - even when I do nothing.
“Background refresh” is ON on devices. Probably a reason of this is that devices are old.
This was on 2020, same I see on 2024.
Means - for some devices location updates were never OK.

Thanks.

I’m just running a test. I modified my Home zone to have a radius of 400 meters. I then created a new automation to notify my phone once I ‘arrived’ at (inbound to) the Home zone. (This was the approach I used in the past and worked reliably before I switched to using proximity.)

If I still get delays with this, then I’ll chalk it up to the phone app not updating a timely manner. But, if I start to get notifications when just I enter the subdivision again, then it will point to a problem with the new proximity integration.

Maybe the phone DOES notify at the correct location, but the new proximity sensors have a timing issue. Who knows? (I wish there was better logging for capturing the time the phone thinks it’s crossed the threshold and updates its location, when the sensor detects that and kicks off the automation, and then when the notification actually reaches my phone. That would make troubleshooting so much easier.)

More to follow once I actually do another journey off the subdivision.

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