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.

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

I have chronic problems with the connection between Xcode and my phone. I plug the phone in and Xcode says "Waiting for phone to unlock", but the phone is already unlocked. I try locking and unlocking it, but nothing happens. If I can get past this problem by disconnection and reconnecting the phone a couple of times, it gets into the "downloading symbols" phase and never gets out of it. Finally, even though I have checked the "Connect via network" option, it never works, and I can never connect unless I plug in the phone with a USB cord (yes, the phone and the computer are on the same Wifi network). Some days this is just an annoyance, but some days (like today) I really need to test something on my phone for a customer who's waiting for it, and I cannot. The thing I'm trying to test involves sending text messages so I can't use the simulator or even an iPad. What can I do to debug this problem?

Hi,According to the documentation for the AVVideoCompositing protocol:"When creating instances of custom video compositors, AV Foundation initializes them by calling init and then makes them available as the value of the customVideoCompositor property of the object to which it was assigned. You then can do any additional setup or configuration to the custom compositor."AVMutableVideoComposition has a customVideoCompositorClass property, but does not have a customVideoCompositor property.Am I misunderstanding this? I need to access the instance to set some properties on it, but I cannot.Thanks,Frank

Is there any way to get Xcode to remember my Git credentials? My company uses a service called Beanstalk to host our Git repositories. Beanstalk is not one of the choices available under "Source Control Accounts", but the repository itself is a standard Git repository. I can access it by giving my credentials at the time I pull or push, but Xcode forgets them whenever I close it.

I want to send my app silent push notifications while it is running in the background, but I've been unable to get it to work. I understand how to send the notification by setting the content-available flag, and I've implemented the "didReceiveRemoteNotification" function in my app delegate. It works, but only if the app is open and running in the foreground. As soon as I put it in the background, didReceiveRemoteNotification doesn't get called again unless I reopen the app. I feel certain that I should be able to receive these notifications when my app is in the background. I have both "Remote notifications" and "Background processing" checked in Signing & Capabilities. Thanks, Frank

I've been using Xcode and Objective-C for years, and rely heavily on the built-in documentation, which is for the most part good.There's an issue that's always bothered me. Today I was looking up a function called class_getName. I found its documentation page, and was also able to navigate to the page showing the overview of the runtime system, all of which is fine.When I typed "class_getName" into my program, the compiler immediately flagged it as an unknown symbol.I knew I probably had to include a header, but none of the documentation pages I looked at mentioned the name of the header file. I had to end up searching the internet for examples until I hit one that showed <objc/runtime.h> being imported.Why isn't this very small, simple and extremely useful bit of information included in the documentation?Frank

Hi,I've been unable to upload a build for the last several hours. Xcode spins for a while on "Fetching list of teams from the Developer Portal..." and then reports "The request timed out".This is not a new app or a new account; I've uploaded about 70 previous builds.Frank

I installed a custom font (Font awesome) into my app. I triple checked that I did everything right: the font files are included in the bundle (they appear in the "Copy Bundle Resources" build phase) and the names of the fonts appear in the Info.plist file under "Fonts provided by application". In Interface builder, I select a Label, set the font to "Custom", then I click the Family list to select the font I want. Once or twice, I was actually able to see the Font Awesome fonts in this list and select one. However, they no longer appear there when I create new labels in new views. I do not understand why. I've been limping along by copying a label from one of the views where it worked and pasting it into the new view, but this is tiresome. I know the fonts are installed correctly because I can see them when I run the app. Why are the fonts not showing up on the font list in interface builder?

Hi,My app is configured to receive location updates while running in the background.I need to send these updates to a server. I'd like to do it as soon as possible, but it isn't absolutely necessary.If I receive a location update in the background, am I allowed to send the data to a server immediately using an NSURLRequest? Do I need to call "beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler" to request time for the request to complete?Or, should I just store the location update in a local database and send it when the app is running in the foreground?I'm assuming that I can use an expression such as "[[UIApplication sharedApplication] applicationState] != UIApplicationStateActive" in my CLLocationManagerDelegate callback to determine whether I'm getting locations in the background.Thanks!

I happen to have a lot of experience writing a Windows application in c#, where the async/await pattern has been a standard feature for years. I can say from this experience that it's a great way to handle concurrency and I'm really happy that Apple is bringing this to Swift. I'm often critical of language improvements that end up reproducing things you could already do with a different syntax, but in this case it's definitely worth it. If you've never used async/await, it may initially look confusing. It looks like all you're doing is blocking your thread from running until another thread completes, but what really happens is that your thread returns at the point where the await keyword appears, and then resumes later when the result is available. So if your thread is the main thread, which is the most common case, using await doesn't block the main thread. Exactly how the compiler manages to suspend and resume the thread without destroying your local variables, I don't know, but I'm sure they figured out a way that makes sense. Frank

I'm getting this message when I try to install Xcode, it says there is not enough disk space.I checked my main volume and there is 60GB available.I'm assuming that Xcode can't possibly require more than 60GB and that this message is a mistake. How do I fix it?Thanks,Frank

Is there a way I can detect at runtime whether the app was installed from Test Flight vs. App Store?Frank

Will Apple continue to support it, or will we wake up one day to find that Swift is the only viable language?It's a serious question. Careers depend on it. I don't accept the "No comment" approach that Apple usually takes. It's cruel.I'm willing to put the time into learning Swift if I have to. I'm not going to do it if I don't. I want to know.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