Location Tracking Issues: Some Users Stop Updating After a Few Hours

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Hi everyone,

I am running Home Assistant OS on a Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB) with an M.2 NVMe setup, using Cloudflare Tunnel for external access. We are a family of 6 users, and our goal is to monitor each other’s location 24/7 for safety purposes.

User Distribution & Scenario:

  • Group A (User 1, 2, and 3): These users live in the house where Home Assistant is located. They enter and leave the “Home Zone” daily. Their location tracking works perfectly.
  • Group B (User 4, 5, and 6): These are elderly family members living in their own separate houses, using their own internet connections.
  • The Issue: Out of the 3 users in Group B, only one (User 4) updates consistently. The other two (User 5 and 6) stop reporting their location after 4-5 hours.

Settings Checked on All Devices:

  • All devices are Android.
  • Location Permission: Set to “Allow all the time” with “Precise Location” enabled.
  • Battery Optimization: Set to “Unrestricted” for the Home Assistant app.
  • Connectivity: External access via Cloudflare is stable. When they manually open the app, they can access the dashboard without issues.

My Questions:

  1. Is there any known limit on the number of users or active device trackers in Home Assistant for real-time tracking?
  2. Why would 2 out of 3 users in the same external networking conditions (staying at their own homes) fail to update while the others work fine?
  3. Could this be a “Keep-Alive” issue or a limitation related to Cloudflare Tunnel’s handling of background webhooks?

I have verified that the settings are identical across all 6 phones. Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

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I’ve seen the same issues and dont use any VPNs. I have 4 different phones (Samsung S23 & A36, Google Pixel 6a & 7). The the 6a frequently (almost daily) lags or does not update at all. The A36 has less frequently issues but sometimes just does not update at all. the S23 and 7 rarely (once every few months) have issues. Of course, they all have the proper settings for perms/gps/etc (same as yours). All on Android 16.

I have seen this problem for ~6 months, and its been worse in the last 3ish months. I suspect this is a bug in the HA Android Mobile app that has been around for a while, through several app versions