How do I get a background location update every n minutes in my iOS application?

user_665657 0
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I'm looking for a way to get a background location update every n minutes in my iOS application. I'm using iOS 4.3 and the solution should work for non-jailbroken iPhones.

I tried / considered following options:

  • CLLocationManager startUpdatingLocation/startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges: This works in the background as expected, based on the configured properties, but it seems not possible to force it to update the location every n minutes
  • NSTimer: Does work when the app is running in the foreground but doesn't seem to be designed for background tasks
  • Local notifications: Local notifications can be scheduled every n minutes, but it's not possible to execute some code to get the current location (without the user having to launch the app via the notification). This approach also doesn't seem to be a clean approach as this is not what notifications should be used for.
  • UIApplication:beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler: As far as I understand, this should be used to finish some work in the background (also limited in time) when an app is moved to the background rather than implementing "long-running" background processes.

How can I implement these regular background location updates?

core-location background-process objective-c ios
14 Answers

In iOS 9 and watchOS 2.0 there's a new method on CLLocationManager that lets you request the current location: CLLocationManager:requestLocation(). This completes immediately and then returns the location to the CLLocationManager delegate.

You can use an NSTimer to request a location every minute with this method now and don't have to work with startUpdatingLocation and stopUpdatingLocation methods.

However if you want to capture locations based on a change of X meters from the last location, just set the distanceFilter property of CLLocationManger and to X call startUpdatingLocation().

user_2781200
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