iPhone Location Tracking Very Inaccurate / Inactive | Home Assistant | Page 1

dusk depot Apr 16, 2025, 2:58 PM

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Hello everyone!

I'm having an issue with person tracking in Home Assistant, and I'd love to get your feedback or any ideas you might have.

👉 Context:
I'm using an iPhone with the official Home Assistant app, and I've made sure to enable all the necessary location settings (background tracking, always allow location access, etc.).

📍 Issue:
The location of my iPhone in Home Assistant is almost never up to date, even when I clearly move between the zones I’ve configured. Sometimes it "catches up" but only after a long delay—if at all.

🔧 What I’ve checked:

Location access set to "Always" in iOS settings
Background app refresh enabled
Motion tracking enabled in the Home Assistant app
App properly connected to the Home Assistant server

❓ Questions:

Are other iPhone users experiencing the same behavior?
Are there any optimizations to be made either in Home Assistant or on the iPhone to make location updates more reliable?

Thanks a lot for your help!

jade hemlock Apr 16, 2025, 6:01 PM

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I have the same issue via iCloud integration. The lat/long seems ok at first, but it doesn't seem up update. I also have location services allowed 'always' on my iphone.

tropic galleon Apr 18, 2025, 1:43 PM

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Same problem here. Didn‘t read about any soolution yet.

dusk parcel Apr 21, 2025, 8:18 PM

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I have a weird workaround if you have a HomePod or Apple TV.

Create dummy toggles in HA and expose them to HomeKit, then setup an automation in HomeKit to toggle it on/off when a user leaves home.

You’ll need to make one per user and one for when everyone leaves, you can then use the status of these toggles for automations in HA.

Works flawlessly for me and on my wife’s phone without her needing the HA companion app installed

dusk depot Apr 29, 2025, 8:00 AM

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Hey everyone,

I noticed something strange and wanted to get your thoughts.

When I look at the location history inside the Home Assistant mobile app (iOS), I can see a lot of accurate location updates — it clearly tracks my movements in the background.

However, these updates don’t seem to be sent to Home Assistant itself. My person entity doesn't reflect these location changes, and automations based on presence are still very unreliable.

❓ Does anyone know why the app logs precise location history but doesn't actually push those updates to Home Assistant ?

kindred geyser Apr 29, 2025, 8:03 AM

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A checklist that may be helpful https://github.com/home-assistant/iOS/issues/3332

GitHub

Location update issues? Please try this first · Issue #3332 · hom...

Make sure you have the remote connection configured correctly. Ensure that the user logged into the app can also log in remotely and not just locally. Check if iOS app permissions are correct (loca...

dusk depot Apr 29, 2025, 8:14 AM

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Thanks a lot for the link!
I went through that checklist already and made sure all the points were covered, but unfortunately the issue still persists.

kindred geyser Apr 29, 2025, 8:54 AM

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Ok, let's see if we find the root cause, if you open Home Assistant now, and then go to your phone sensors, is everything correct? (I'll make very basic questions haha bare with me)

dusk depot Apr 29, 2025, 1:00 PM

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Thanks! I really appreciate your help 🙏
No worries about the basic questions — I’m happy to go step by step.

I just checked the app and everything seems normal in the sensor data: GPS coordinates are correct, battery level is updating, etc. I’ve attached some screenshots from the Companion App — let me know if anything looks off to you!

WhatsApp_Image_2025-04-29_at_14.51.52_1.jpeg

WhatsApp_Image_2025-04-29_at_14.51.52_2.jpeg

WhatsApp_Image_2025-04-29_at_14.51.52.jpeg

kindred geyser Apr 29, 2025, 1:01 PM

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Cool, now how does it looks in home assistant itself? Device & integrationg > Mobile App > Your iPhone

dusk depot Apr 29, 2025, 4:52 PM

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Thanks again!
Everything looks good on my end in my iPhone entities, except for the location data, which doesn't seem to update in real time.

All the other sensors (battery, Wi-Fi, etc.) are updating correctly — it's just the GPS data that doesn't reflect my actual movements...

kindred geyser Apr 29, 2025, 4:53 PM

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Geocoded location or device tracker (last entity)? Or both?

Btw realtime is not guaranteed

nova rock May 2, 2025, 12:37 PM

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kindred geyser Geocoded location or device tracker (last entity)? Or both? Btw realtime is not...

That's a common problem with HA in general. The infrastructure is many times there and we all want it to work that way, but HA still tends to fall short sometimes in the execution, esp. of realtime information. Some integrations seem to work much better than others. Maybe some of it lies in the way the integrations are written.

kindred geyser May 2, 2025, 6:58 PM

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Apologies, but the realtime I was referring is an iOS limitation, I can’t guarantee that for example, if your battery level changes it will instantly reflect in Home Assistant, it’s not a HA limitation, it’s Apples to preserve battery and background use abuse

#iPhone Location Tracking Very Inaccurate / Inactive