I need some clarification on what is supposed to happen if the "allowsBackgroundLocationUpdates" flag on CLLocationManager is set to true, and only the "While in Use" permission has been given. The customer I'm working with thinks that this combination should allow the app to receive location updates in the background indefinitely, as long as the app was in the foreground when we started receiving them. What we've experienced is inconsistent. App updates do continue when the screen locks and in some cases when we switch to another app, but often they do not. Our app doesn't require location updates 24/7, it requires them for a period of time when the user is performing an activity. The user starts and stops the activity in the app, and the activity might last up to a couple of hours. Can we do this using "While in Use" or do we need to request "Always" ?

I'm writing an app in which the user is expected to initiate location tracking, let the app track for a period of time (a few minutes to a couple of hours) and then discontinue tracking. We want the user to be able to switch apps or let their device lock while tracking without losing any location updates. My understanding is that this can be done with the "While in use" location permission and does not require "Always". We don't want to have to ask our users for the "Always" permission. I'm configuring the location manager this way: locationManager.delegate = self locationManager.desiredAccuracy = kCLLocationAccuracyBestForNavigation locationManager.allowsBackgroundLocationUpdates = true locationManager.showsBackgroundLocationIndicator = true locationManager.distanceFilter = kCLDistanceFilterNone locationManager.activityType = .otherNavigation locationManager.pausesLocationUpdatesAutomatically = false (The user is expected to be walking around in an outdoor location, stopping occasionally to take notes and pictures). I've tested this using both an iPhone and an iPad that relies on an external GPS device. It works. I can lock the device and see a continuous stream of location updates in the debugger for hours. I've also tested it while walking outdoors. However, my customer keeps reporting that the app stops tracking his location whenever it goes into the background. He says that it will track his location fine while in the foreground, but when he backgrounds it, it stops getting location updates. Then when it comes into the foreground again, it resumes. When we plot the locations on a map, you see a straight line between the place where the app went into background and where it woke up again. We know for sure that the app is just transitioning to and from the background and that it is not being terminated and restarted. I can't reproduce this result on my devices and can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. The customer says he has another app on his device (which is also an iPad with an external GPS) and that the other app does track him when it is in the background. My app does process all of the locations received in the didUpdateLocations method and not just the last one, so it's not that I'm getting the updates and ignoring them. I'm also not receiving any calls to 'locationManagerDidPauseLocationUpdates', 'didFinishDeferredUpdatesWithError', or 'didFailWithError'. The only explanation I can think of at the moment is that something changed in iOS. I know that the other app my customer is using is fairly old and built against an old version of the iOS SDK. Thanks for your help.

I'm unable to use Organizer due to this error. The app shown in the error message is an old, unused test app. I'd delete it if I could, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that. The app is named "@Home Test" and I suspect that the @ character is what's causing the problem. I need to use Organizer for a completely different app on another team, but I can't get past this.

I've been aware for some time that Push notifications work on the iOS simulator now -- I see them pop up while I'm working. However, it would seem that SILENT push notifications do not work. I came to this conclusion only after several frustrating hours of debugging my app, thinking either the app was broken or the server wasn't sending the notification. Finally I tested it on a device and found that it actually works fine. Why does such a limitation exist? If I can't depend on the simulator to handle ALL of the notifications, I'd rather it didn't work at all. Having it work part of the time on some notifications is really confusing.

Hi,One of my external testers wants to run my app on a second device.He asked me to please send him another invitation for the second device. I don't know how to do this. If I try to add his email address again, nothing happens. If he tries to re-use the original invitation, it doesn't work.How do I invite the same person to test on a new device? Does he need to get another email address?Frank

Hi,I'm working with subscriptions.How do I know when a subscription expires, or is cancelled by the user? Does Apple push this information to my app automatically, or do I have to execute a command such as SKReceiptRefreshRequest or restoreCompletedTransactions?What is the difference between requesting a receipt refresh and restoring completed transactions?Thanks,Frank

Hi,Is it possible using MusicKit to play songs through audio filters, such as pitch shift or time stretch filters?Is it possible to play two songs at once for the purpose of fading between them?Is there a way that I can access tempo information about songs?Thanks,Frank

Hi,I'm familiar with the "willTransition" method of view controllers that lets you detect when a transition to a new UITraitCollection is about to begin.What I need is a callback that happens after the transition is finished. There doesn't seem to be any "didTransition" method, nor any delegate property on the UIViewControllerTransitionCoordinator that I can use for this.How does one obtain this callback?Thanks,Frank

A customer added me to their team today as a developer.When I sign in to App Store Connect, I can see and select their team from the list that appears under my name. However, when I open Xcode, the team doesn't appear under my Apple ID in Account Preferences or in the Team drop-down in the signing tab.I also noticed that even though I can select the team in App Store Connect, my name doesn't appear on the Users and Access screen. But I can see the app that I was assigned to work on.I tried closing and opening Xcode several times. I also removed and re-added my Apple ID.I waited several hours in case this was some sort of data propagation issue, but it hasn't resolved. What should I do next?Frank

How do I configure an iPad app to only work in portrait mode?In Xcode there are checkboxes for the four orientations, and only Portrait is checked, but the app still rotates into landscape mode.I also tried checking the "Requires full screen" box, but this didn't have any effect.Thanks,Frank

My app has been reporting error code -1200, "NSURLErrorSecureConnectionFailed", on a very small number of end user devices. I cannot reproduce the error. The devices that report this error have ranged from very old iOS 9 devices to modern iOS 14 devices. The documentation says, "An attempt to establish a secure connection failed for reasons that can’t be expressed more specifically." Can anyone elaborate on what kinds of reasons might cause this error? I'm otherwise stuck, with no way to explain this to my customers and no advice for how they might fix it. Thanks, Frank

The server I'm working with returns a date/time string that is always expressed in US central time. There is no timezone information in the string itself. In order to parse this string, I need to create a DateFormatter and then assign its timeZone property. I'm having trouble figuring out the right way to do this. I know that the correct string that means US central time is "America/Chicago", but it appears that the TimeZone initializer is looking for an abbreviation, rather than a full string. I don't know what the correct abbreviation is. I don't want to use "CST" or "CDT" since those denote standard or daylight time. I need something that means whatever the current timzeone is in Chicago. In Java, as an example, the Timezone class accepts "America/Chicago" as an initializer and it works whether or not the calendar is on daylight savings time. Thanks, Frank

I'm using Sign In with Apple and requesting both .fullname and .email. The first time I sign in on any given device, the callback to my app has an authorization credential that contains an email address and a fullname, as expected. However, any subsequent login on the same device does not return either the email address or the fullname. All I get is the user ID string. The server I'm working with requires an email address to log in, so I need that email address. Why does it only appear the first time? Frank

I'm trying to figure out the right way to format a Decimal number as a currency value in Swift. For example, if the Decimal contains the value 25.1 I'd want this to print as "$25.10". If it had the value 25, I'd want "$25.00". If it happened to contain a value like 25.4575, I'd want to round it off and display "$25.46". There are a confusing amount of functions surrounding Decimals and string formatting. I know I can't just use String(format: "%.2f", value) like I can do with floats and doubles. There appears to be a new FormatStyle property of Decimal, but I can't use that yet because it requires iOS 15. Thanks, Frank

I need to do something that seems simple but I can't figure out the right syntax. Given a string, I need to search for the first occurrence of a substring (not a character). If found, I need to create a new string by removing the part of the old string that is before the substring. I can't see how this is done in Swift. There is a "firstIndexOf" function, but it only searches for one character at a time. I also know that there is a "range(of:)" function, but I can't find its documentation, and I don't know what the return type is, or how I would use it. Thanks, Frank