iOS 15 Geofencing Issue
iOS Region Monitoring (geofencing) has stopped working reliably in iOS 15 and does not always detect when you enter or exit a geographical region. This issue has been reported by many users and affects many types of apps, such as alarms, calendars, home automation, and mileage trackers.
What's geofencing?
Geofencing, or Region Monitoring, is a mechanism that allows an app to be notified when you enter or exit a circular geographical region. When this happens, iOS launches the app in the background. Psngr app uses geofencing in order to detect when you start moving in order to begin recording your trip.
How does geofencing work?
Region monitoring is a pretty nifty feature that approximates your location based on WiFi and cellular signal, but does not use GPS. As such, it is very power efficient and allows Psngr to detect that a trip starts without using your location, thus conserving battery.
When you use Psngr Beacon, the app also uses region monitoring in order to detect when you are in proximity of the beacon. This is done by registering an iBeacon region with iOS in a similar way to registering a geographical region.
What is the issue with geofencing in iOS 15?
In iOS 15 region monitoring stopped working reliably and does not always detect when you exit the geographical region marked by the app. This issue has been reported by users and developers alike, and is affecting many apps that rely on this mechanism, such as alarms, calendars, automation app and mileage trackers.
We have reported the issue to Apple via Feedback Assistant on 8 October 2021, and have learnt that it is under investigation by Apple engineers.
If you experience issues with automatic trip logging in Psngr app, we sincerely apologise. Unfortuantely, there is no known workaround for the issue. Failure of region monitoring may appear and then disappear within a few days.
Until Apple fixes the issue in an iOS update, we recommend that you check the app daily and log any missed trips manually.
Update 23 Dec 2021
Some initial reports from users on Apple Support Communities indicate that the issue is resolved in iOS 15.3 beta. However, Apple has not yet released any new information regarding the resolution of this issue.
Update 1 Feb 2022 - Issue Resolved!
iOS 15.3 has been officially released on 26 Jan 2022 and, according to user reports, have fixed the issues in geofencing. If you haven't yet installed iOS 15.3, please do so via iOS Settings > General > Software Update.
Contact us
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at support@psngr.co.