WWDC 2019: Significant Updates to Location Permissions coming with iOS 13
This year’s WWDC has been full of major updates and platform changes. One theme that seems to have permeated throughout these announcements is Apple’s continued privacy-first approach to the evolution of its’ products and services
It should come as no surprise that with privacy as a guiding principle, app developers and publishers will see updates to the way in which location permissions are communicated, opted in to and messaged on an ongoing basis.
With iOS 11, we saw the first round of updates to the location opt-in process. With iOS 13, we’ll see this process go even farther. As Apple mentioned in its’ Platforms State of the Union address, location opt-in can give developers a significant view into the lives of their users, including where they live and work, how often they go to the gym… or the bar. This user profile is particularly detailed when app location permissions are set at ‘Always On’ levels. As such, capturing ‘Always On’ permission levels will become increasingly difficult for publishers.
New location permission prompts will provide users with 3 options: ‘Allow While in Use’, ‘Allow Once’ and ‘Don’t Allow’ — removing the ‘Always On’ option and adding ‘Allow Once’ to the initial request screen.
The new process to achieve ‘Always On’ will require the user to initially select ‘Allow While in Use’ with the initial location request. With this permission, your app can then request location once in the background, which will then prompt a new platform message giving the user the option to choose ‘Keep Only While Using’ or, to agree to ‘Always Allow’.
If the user does agree to ‘Always Allow’, background access will be granted, however, from time to time, the user will receive platform messages reminding them that the app has been using location in the background and will present a map image of the locations where location has been captured for that device.
With this two step ‘Always On’ opt-in process, in addition to occasional background location message prompts, it would seem ‘Always On’ opt-in rates are destined for a significant decline. While this bodes well for users looking to have more control over the information they share with app publishers, it will pose new challenges to app publishers who relied on background location for things like geofence and beacon-based messaging.
