Background GPS in iOS. Is this possible?

iphone objective-c ios gps core-location
Ben Cohen picture Ben Cohen · Apr 3, 2011 · Viewed 16.9k times · Source

I was wondering if it was possible to get the location of the iPhone with an app that isnt running, or at least running in the background. What I want to do is have the iPhone send a push notification when it arrives at a certain coordinate. Is this possible? If so, could someone put me in the right direction?

Thanks, Ben

Answer

user94896 picture user94896 · Apr 3, 2011

Yes, it is possible. Your application can ask to be notified of significant location changes or to simply continue using the GPS while executing in the background. The former—the approach recommended by Apple—uses less power at the cost of accuracy (this blog post indicates that the updates are accurate to roughly 500m), while the latter is as accurate as the device can manage. This is all detailed in the iOS Application Programming Guide and and the Location Awareness Programming Guide.

If you simply want your application to be notified when the device moves into a particular region, you may want to look into CLLocationManager's startMonitoringForRegion:desiredAccuracy:. If the device moves into a particular geographical region, your app is launched (even if it's not running!).

Related questions

How do I make an HTTP request in Swift?

I read The Programming Language Swift by Apple in iBooks, but cannot figure out how to make an HTTP request (something like cURL) in Swift. Do I need to import Obj-C classes or do I just need to import default …

Read More
How to load a UIView using a nib file created with Interface Builder

I'm trying to do something a bit elaborate, but something that should be possible. So here is a challenge for all you experts out there (this forum is a pack of a lot of you guys :) ). I'm creating a Questionnaire "…

Read More
Setting an image for a UIButton in code

How do you set the image for a UIButton in code? I have this: UIButton *btnTwo = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeRoundedRect]; btnTwo.frame = CGRectMake(40, 140, 240, 30); [btnTwo setTitle:@"vc2:v1" forState:UIControlStateNormal]; [btnTwo addTarget:self action:@selector(goToOne) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside]; [self.view addSubview:btnTwo]; …

Read More