UPDATE - January 26, 2022
iOS 15.3 has been released! Please update to this version of iOS as our testing has shown much better auto-open performance and Apple developer support has indicated there are "some fixes" in this update to the background location bugs that have been plaguing iOS since 15.0 was released. Please also make sure you are running the latest version of the Tailwind app.
I'm sure it hasn't been fun working as a developer at Apple lately if you're on any of the location or bluetooth teams responsible for iOS. There are some pretty significant bugs that cropped up in iOS 15. Frankly it hasn't been fun at Tailwind either. Some people are quick to point the finger at the small company. Customers are upset and they want answers as to why their auto-open / close features are not working properly. If you don't want to read the rest of this article, the short answer is "We have to wait for Apple to fix some bugs introduced in iOS 15". Period. If you want to know more, please read on. If you don't believe these are Apple / iOS bugs, check out the Apple developer thread here.
Since mobile phones need to be very careful when it comes to battery management, the operating system will suspend any app that isn't absolutely necessary at any given moment. Often this means that when an app is not displayed on the screen, it will stop running shortly after you swipe away from it. Of course there are exceptions such as apps that need to keep your playlist alive even when you put down your phone. But those apps are placed in a special category and they specifically have that exact permission to keep playing audio. Other apps, such as, oh I don't know, one that opens your garage door? Well, those will get suspended within seconds of putting the phone down.
When things are working properly, an app on an iPhone can tell iOS "Hey, wake me up if any of these things happen". These events can be things like entering within a certain geofenced area, or certain types of wireless devices are detected nearby, or a certain type of notification comes in. All these things happen in the background when are you are not actively using any particular app, and even when your phone is sitting locked in your pocket or on a table.
Some of these wakeup calls in iOS 15 are broken. They aren't reliable. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes you can restart the phone and they start working - or maybe not. Some people are experiencing consistent failures while others experience none. Tesla has hardware in their cars that is supposed to trigger one of these wakeup calls so that an iPhone can function as a key to the car. The user walks up to the car. iOS detects the hardware, wakes up the Tesla app, which then unlocks the door. All of this happens without the user even having to think about it. Except that now it doesn't do this reliably anymore. The Tesla forums have multiple threads of Tesla owners wondering why their doors don't unlock anymore since they updated to iOS 15. You can read about the Tesla problems here and here. You can also see developer threads discussing the issues here and here. Here is a thread on the Arlo forums where their tech support stated there is no choice but to wait for Apple to fix the bugs. You can do a Google search on "IOS 15 geofencing not working" and find lots more.
It's a similar situation with Tailwind. When you walk up to your car, iOS normally detects the vehicle sensor, wakes up the Tailwind app, and that enables the location tracking and auto-open / close to occur. If that wakeup call fails we have backup wakeup calls as well - and those are also failing.
Apple is actively working to resolve these issues and apparently they have some of them fixed, but we don't know yet which version of iOS those fixes will be included in.
We will continue to do our best to keep our customers updated on this issue and we really do hope the teams at Apple get these bugs ironed out soon. It can't be any fun for them working late hours and weekends, and I know our tech support inquiries have sky-rocketed over this.
Please hang in there. I really do believe they will have most of this stuff sorted out soon. You can bet that we will be testing every iOS beta update they make available.
Comments
61 comments
So we do have an app update coming out shortly (in beta now) that should fix the mixup of the doors. Despite iOS messing that up, we did find a way to deal with that particular bug and it is fixed in the beta app in testing now.
But for everything else we just have to wait for Apple. I got another update from them today and in a nutshell it said "we're working on it".
Thanks for the feedback Brian and Marc. Just an additional data point for you - iOS 15.3 beta 2 is still being tested but so far has not failed even once in our internal testing. Apple told us there were "fixes" in this version but they did not say "everything is now fixed" pertaining to the specific bugs that affect the auto-open feature.
I am encouraged by our test results but more by Apple's comments because we've tested before and had perfect results - and then found out some customers would have horrible experiences with auto-open and almost all the bug reports showed bugs in iOS.
Knock on wood - once iOS 15.3 releases I'm hopeful things begin to return to normal.
I'm not really sure but it shouldn't have a significant effect on your phone's ability to determine and report it's location while driving for what amounts to almost 2 miles (1.89 miles). It's interesting that your phone reported that you were 2km away (6,561 feet) away from home, and then just 2 seconds later reported that you were 360 feet away from home - so clearly the location data was wrong unless you happen to drive 2,114 MPH :)
Marc,
If it "flickers" it just turned on. One solid flash means it just turned off. If it is turning on then a new battery is not going to fix the issue. Based on what I saw in your bug report Marc everything is working fine but iOS is just not "seeing" the vehicle sensor at all.
If the vehicle sensor is turning on (it flashes rapidly when you press the button), then a new battery is not going to help unless for some reason the battery is so bad that it dies immediately after powering on, then the cell recovers enough over time to power up again. You can test for this by repeatedly pressing and holding the power button. If you can cycle it on / off by repeatedly pressing the power button every minute or so then it is remaining powered on and not instantly croaking.
If it seems to remain powered on and auto-open still isn't working you could try deleting the vehicle from the app and then adding it back again to see if that helps.
Your neighbours must get tired of all the sonic booms. Yes I am Canadian and we spell "neighbor" differently up here :)
I've started testing iOS 15.3 beta and so far so good. I also saw a post from another developer in the Smart Things forums stating it appeared to be working as the Smart Things location services were also having the same issues (obviously).
It's still WAY too early to tell for sure though. Testing has just begun as 15.3 beta 2 just came out.
Ok great! Glad you're all set now Marc. We tested this version for a lot of cycles and it worked every single time - but we did not test every scenario and Brian unfortunately has 2 scenarios we did not test. An iPhone 6, and an iPhone running iOS14.
Please send a bug report after you arrive home Marc, and let me know once you send it. We tested this version so many times it is really disappointing to hear that it failed on you like that. We had a team of people testing it and nobody could get it to fail even once.
Hi Brian and Marc,
We pushed out an app update today. Did you get that one? Yes it is super frustrating to say the least Marc. I haven't had a good night's sleep since iOS15 came out. Between Apple's patch code they sent us plus some really creative coding the update we released today should work for most customers.
We don't actually test with the iPhone 6. Our testing only goes back as far as iPhone 7 and it worked perfectly with iPhone 7.
We did receive an update from Apple developer tech support recently and they at least disclosed more specifics about what's going on "under the hood" in iOS 15. I don't think I am permitted to share the details, and I certainly don't want to upset the folks at Apple that are feeding us breadcrumbs trying to help while Apple fixes their bugs. They even sent us some code to try as a countermeasure / short term solution. Unfortunately that code only appears to execute AFTER the fact. So basically if iOS fails to launch our app when it should, the next time you tap on our app to launch it, the countermeasure code runs and basically tells us "yeah, it happened again".
If I get the green light from our contacts at Apple that I can share more about what I know, you can bet money that I will share with you.
It does not appear to be fixed in iOS 15.2.
Hi Marc,
No. We built our app to detect the iOS version. If iOS 15.3 is installed it disables the patch code and should work properly. The patch code is only executed if the iOS version is 15.0 -> 15.2.x. So no updates are required of the Tailwind app.
I have been running iOS 15.3 beta versions since they became available to developers and have not experienced a single auto-open / close failure, and the other app on my phone that I use to test background location services has also returned to normal.
Of course I have no way of knowing WHAT Apple fixed exactly, and for sure they would never tell me. But they did tell me that there were "some fixes" in 15.3 and our testing confirms that is true. Whether or not they fixed EVERYTHING and those fixes are 100% only time will tell.
But it is definitely working at least in our testing - every single time.
I'm blushing! Thank you very much!
Yes that is one of the failure modes. It actually also existed in iOS 14 but seems to be worse in iOS 15. We have been able to compensate for that failure mode in our upcoming app release, so once you get the updated app (you'll see the "what's new" pop up), that should not happen anymore.
Unfortunately there are failure modes in iOS 15 that just cannot be compensated for on our side of things no matter how creative we get with our coding.
Scott
leaving for some errands soon will try the other app
Brian
I have deleted and downloaded/installed the app. Shut down and restarted the phone. Opened the app to make it was initialized, but the door does not open. I sent a bug report a few minutes ago.
Hi Brian,
I reviewed the bug reports from your wife's phone. The iOS15 bugs are running rampant on it. They are completely destroying our app's ability to function. I have not yet seen anything like that in any bug report since the app update was released.
When you launch the Diagnostic Tool or the Sensor Diagnostic Tool, it is different than when you're just going through your day with your phone in your pocket. When you are not actively using those tools in our app, our app relies on built-in features in iOS to detect the vehicle sensor and notify our app. That's not happening on your wife's phone. iOS is also supposed to notify our app when you leave home or when you are approaching home and penetrate a 2km radius (1.24 miles). That's also not happening on your wife's phone.
These are EXACTLY just SOME of the iOS bugs we, and many, many other companies have been reporting to Apple.
I don't know what to tell you. Hopefully somehow it magically fixes itself. Only Apple can know why this happens, and only Apple can fix it. They told us their patch code was not bulletproof and did not handle all cases. In our testing it worked every time on phones as old as iPhone 7, but we did notice that after updating the phone operating system in some cases we had to do additional phone restarts to get things working properly.
There is an additional app you can install on her phone to see if it works or not. Once you install it and grant "always" location permission, it pops up a notification each time you are arriving home. My guess is that app would also not work on her phone.
If you go on the app store, search "GeoTargetNote". This is a basic, simple app for testing background location tracking.
Confirmed. Neither app worked. This was with the other vehicle/door so eliminates any concerns with the vehicle sensor. Will just have to try a couple more phone restarts and hope for good news with the next IOS update.
Thanks for your time and effort Scott.
Yes I is the one that comes up under the vehicle diagnostics. I only have two and if it was connected to the other sensor I assume that door wou open when I came home. But thanks for the input.
Apple just released 15.2.1... I will update and try tomorrow.
Thank you Marc. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Apple engineering just contacted me a few hours ago to let me know they have just released iOS 15.3 beta 2 for developer testing. We are downloading and installing it now. Apple tells me there should be fixes in that version and that we should test our app WITHOUT their patch code - so great. We just released an app update WITH their patch code and now we are going to test 15.3 beta 2 WITHOUT it.
With any luck 15.3 beta 2 performs well and we can yank their patch code from our app when they release it. Testing will start tomorrow. We need to pull their patch code from the app tonight and get busy.
Brian are you sure your sensor is on updated and selected correctly under your vehicle in the app? That is as my issue. The name of the sensor changed so the app never knew I had it. Just had to ask.
Scott I just pulled up and it did not open, sent a bug report, what are you seeing?
I have our lead iOS developer checking it Marc. I had a look and I can see that the phone did not provide any location updates between the distances of 10348 feet and 360 feet away from home. I don't know why that would happen and I don't know what impact such a large gap in location data would do to our algorithms. Why your phone would successfully deliver location updates to our app, then suddenly stop delivering them, and then suddenly start again when you were 360 feet from home is something I can't answer.
Anyways, he is checking it now and I'll let you know what he says.
I'm also going to ask Apple Developer support if this is still an occasionally expected behaviour in iOS 15.3. It's possible they still have a few kinks to iron out.
I have a question I guess related to that... I do not know what distance, but lets say a couple blocks away my WiFi from my house probably gets picked up by my phone and switches off the 5G signal to wifi, maybe intermittent.... . Would that affect it at all? Would the 5G signal vs LTE do anything(I am assuming no on this one). Last, I did do that Apple update last night, I wonder if that has anything to do with it.
The feedback from our lead developer is that there were apparently 2 iOS failures, both of them consistent with the iOS15 bugs.
1) Our app requested to be alerted when you traveled a certain distance when you were 10,348 feet away from home. That alert never came.
2) Our app requested to be alerted when you entered inside a geofence of 2km from your home. That alert finally came but you were slightly more than 360 feet away from home when it came.
Both of these are consistent with the iOS15 bugs we have been talking about, and what Apple has acknowledged exists. Apple's patch code does not work in all cases (according to Apple), and I guess these were 2 of them combined together. Neither of them worked properly. iOS woke up our app but it was so late our app didn't have time to react and get enough location data to open the door.
When iOS is working properly I can tell you that it will wake up an app within a few seconds of entering a geofence. It is very good at geofence entry - usually. But to have a geofence at 6,561 feet and wake up our app at 360 feet is ridiculously late.
Thanks for the details Scott, what a mess, sure hope 15.3 fixes this all! And, Yes, I do drie 2,000mph, HAHA!
Thanks for the update!! I have tried to tell some YouTube testers of this bug, but have not seen them much on the ones I watch.
Well fingers crossed 15.3 goes a long way to solving most of this mess. I need to sign off for a bit now. Getting back in the car and driving up and down the street for a while. I've put probably 100,000 miles on my car driving up and down the road testing. Thank Goodness I live out in the country or I would have the cops called on me constantly wondering what the heck I'm doing.
I had to build a special test system that just triggers lights instead of garage doors because I was breaking springs and wearing out my actual garage doors / openers :)
Scott
An update for you. My new. iPhone 13 is working well with Tailwind. After several restarts including one that reset all settings on my wife’s phone chasing down an intermittent notification problem, it has also started working with Tailwind.
Thanks for all your help. We are again enjoying one of the great features of Tailwind.
Nice, you went with a 13! My auto open has been working as well. Just one time it didnt last week, but since then it is and it is so nice not having to reach or think about opening the garage door! Best gadget ever Scott!! Thanks!
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