Running IOS App with Screen Locked

Question

I am working on a sports app that uses GPS and OpenEars text-to-speech. The app delivers speed and other GPS info to the user audibly (via earphones) so the user (skier, cyclist, etc) can get the GPS info without looking at the screen. In order to save battery life, I would like the app to run in the background with the screen off. Is this possible with IOS? I tried setting "Required backgrund modes" for both GPS and audio, but my app quits working when the screen is off.

thanks..

Answer 1

There's no way to do it as service except some special cases provided by ios. But you can simulate it. This post answer how to:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/19121250/2835520

I hope it's gonna help!

Answer 2

You can subscribe to GPS info change notifications and your app will run when something needs to be updated. Check this.

Please note this sentence:

"If you leave this service running and your application is subsequently suspended or terminated, the service automatically wakes up your application when new location data arrives. At wake-up time, your application is put into the background and given a small amount of time to process the location data. Because your application is in the background, it should do minimal work and avoid any tasks (such as querying the network) that might prevent it from returning before the allocated time expires. If it does not, your application may be terminated."

Answer 3

One one to get around it is to have a silent audio file playing, when there is no audio, it might get your app rejected in the app store though... here is a question that talks about the silent audio file playing to keep in the background... It might get through app store approval in your situation since it is an app that relays on audio as one of its main functionalities..