Ibeacon Notification When the App Is Not Running

iBeacon Notification when the app is not running

Yes, it's possible and should be automatic.

After you have created a CLBeaconRegion and started monitoring on it, Location Services will keep track of whether your phone is in or out of the region, even when your app isn't running. If you app isn't running during a transition, iOS will launch your app into the background for a few seconds to call the appropriate CLLocationManagerDelegate methods.

I found out the above behavior through experimentation with my own app, but have also witnessed it with Apple's AirLocate sample program. With AirLocate, if you set up a monitoring region then reboot your phone, AirLocate will still deliver a local notification as soon as the phone enters the region.

Take care when testing this, because sometimes it takes up to 4 minutes after turning on/off an iBeacon before iOS recognizes the region state transition. EDIT: As of the iPhone 5, apps will typically use hardware acceleration to detect beacons within a few seconds, and if hardware acceleration is not available, it can take up to 15 minutes.

EDIT 3: AS of iOS 13, you must make sure the user actually grants background permission and not "only once" or "when in use" permission which are heavily pushed by the operating system in the dialogs they present to the user. See here for details.

EDIT 2: As of iOS 8, you need to make sure you have called and successfully obtained locationManager.requestAlwaysAuthorization() as locationManager.requestWhenInUseAuthorization() only lets beacons be detected in the foreground.

I have posted a detailed discussion on how this all works in this blog post.

Beacon Notification when the app is not running on Android

Yes, it is possible with the open source Android Beacon Library. It works by starting a low-power background beacon scanning service for your app when the phone boots, or when it is connected/disconnected from power.

Details about how you set this up, how it works, and its limitations are available here.

Sometimes App is not giving notification of iBeacon when app is kill by user in ios

I have been working with iBeacon for around a year now, i have had the same scenarios encountered.
As per my experience with this if you are already inside a region, it takes some time to notify the 'didEnterRegion' delegate method. But if you are outside region a then entering the same you are likely to get the delegate called instantly and this depends on the Beacon Manufacture you are testing with. [More accuracy were found with RadBeacon, Estimote and Kontakt ]

Normally the TxPower configured to the beacons will be +4 dBm thats a Beacon can transmit till 70m/230". Try with going out of the region with the App in killed state and then enter the region.

When we set notifyOnEntry, notifyOnExit to YES/true, the control is with the OS LocationManager wether to notify the App about the region entry state, and you can handle it with a Notification thrown to the User and start Monitoring and then Ranging for the encountered region.

Listening For Beacons When App is Not Running

Apple treats iBeacon support differently than other BLE services.

It considers iBeacons monitoring to be a Location Manager service.

You want to add the NSLocationAlwaysUsageDescription key to your app's info.plist.

At startup, you want to check the location manager's authorization status, and if it's not kCLAuthorizationStatusAuthorizedAlways then you want to request it. That code looks like this:

CLAuthorizationStatus status =[CLLocationManager authorizationStatus];

if (status != kCLAuthorizationStatusAuthorizedAlways
  && [self.theLocManager respondsToSelector: 
    @selector(requestAlwaysAuthorization)])
  {
    [self.theLocManager requestAlwaysAuthorization];
  }

EDIT:

In your app delegate's application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method, you need to check the options for the key UIApplicationLaunchOptionsLocationKey.

To quote the relevant part of the CLLocationManager Class Reference:

If a region boundary crossing occurs while your iOS app is not
running, the system automatically wakes it up (or relaunches it) in
the background so that it can process the event. In this case, the
options dictionary passed to the
application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method of your app delegate
contains the key UIApplicationLaunchOptionsLocationKey to indicate
that your app was launched because of a location-related event. During
the relaunch process, you must recreate your location manager object
and assign a delegate capable of handling region-related events. After
you do that, the system delivers the region notification for which
your app was launched. All of the regions you configured previously
are made available in the monitoredRegions property of any location
manager objects you create.

How to show a notification to the users after detecting iBeacon, while the app is running and while it is closed?

The issue is that you cannot present a view controller more than once. It is the same essential problem that I answered here: How to play a video after iBeacon detection?

To clarify, although the question mentions a "notification", the issue is really with an alert dialog. (Notification on iOS typically has a more specific meaning where it refers to a NSNotificaitonCenter item that can show up on the lock screen.)

The alert dialog instance is constructed once when the class loads at the time let videos is initialized. Then it is presented to the user inside the unc locationManager(_ manager: CLLocationManager, didRangeBeacons beacons: [CLBeacon], in region: CLBeaconRegion) method, which gets called every second.

You can't re-present the exact same instance of the alert dialog every second. You can only present it once, otherwise you will get the error shown. You can show it again only after it is no longer displayed to the user.

How to get iBeacon Notification when the app is in Background mode in ios 10 and above?

Even if the app is not running, location events (related to the beacons in this case) are handled the same way as any other app launching events. Every time a phone enters or exits a region while the app is terminated, it will be automatically launched.

application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method (of AppDelegate class) is called with UIApplicationLaunchOptionsLocationKey key existing in launchOptions parameter.

When you verify this key exists (so location was the reason that your app was launched) you should create new instance of ESTBeaconManager class, set delegate to AppDelegate object (or any other object that is working as ESTBeaconManagerDelegate and was created before this event occurred) and start monitoring.

Region you are passing to the startMonitoringForRegion: method is not important, as ESTBeaconManager delegate will receive the most recent region information. You can just pick any of the ones your app registered in iOS. After Monitoring is revoked, app will automatically receive most recent entered/exited region event in beaconManager:didEnterRegion: or beaconManager:didExitRegion: method.

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions
{ 
  if([launchOptions objectForKey:@"UIApplicationLaunchOptionsLocationKey"])
  {
    self.beaconManager = [ESTBeaconManager new];
    self.beaconManager.delegate = self;
    // don't forget the NSLocationAlwaysUsageDescription in your Info.plist
    [self.beaconManager requestAlwaysAuthorization];
    [self.beaconManager startMonitoringForRegion:[[ESTBeaconRegion alloc]
                                                  initWithProximityUUID:ESTIMOTE_PROXIMITY_UUID
                                                  identifier:@"AppRegion"]];
  }
  return YES;
}

-(void)beaconManager:(ESTBeaconManager *)manager didEnterRegion:(ESTBeaconRegion *)region
{
  UILocalNotification *notification = [[UILocalNotification alloc] init];
  notification.alertBody = @"Enter region";
  notification.soundName = UILocalNotificationDefaultSoundName;

  [[UIApplication sharedApplication] presentLocalNotificationNow:notification];
}

-(void)beaconManager:(ESTBeaconManager *)manager didExitRegion:(ESTBeaconRegion *)region
{
  UILocalNotification *notification = [[UILocalNotification alloc] init];
  notification.alertBody = @"Exit region";
  notification.soundName = UILocalNotificationDefaultSoundName;

  [[UIApplication sharedApplication] presentLocalNotificationNow:notification];
}

Trigger Local notification to the killed/Quitted App on iBeacon Detection

No special programming is needed to make this work. If you can make your app do this in the background, it should also work after the app is killed or on reboot (if enough time is allowed to pass for CoreLocation to initialize.)

If you are not seeing this work, you may be experiencing a test setup issue:

• Make sure you have exited the beacon region before killing the app or rebooting.

• Make sure you wait long enough. In some cases detections can take up to 15 minutes.

How to use ibeacon when application in background and iphone reboot

Nothing special is needed to detect beacons in the background after reboot using CoreLocation monitoring APIs. If detections work without a reboot they should work with one.

The important thing to know about the bootup process on iOS is that it can take several minutes after reboot before CoreLocation is fully initialized and responding to Bluetooth LE beacons. When testing after a reboot, be extra patient. The fact that illuminating the display accelerates this process does not change that this is true.

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