If I have an app running, and I go to my home screen and do other things. My app is still running.. right? I know it's able to get push notifications and things like that. But is it able to run any operations in the background. For example, if I have my app running in the background is it able to detect an incoming phone call, or detect some other internal events?
The various background processing modes available to an iOS application are described in the iOS App Programming Guide
If you want to detect an incoming phone call to your app (a VoIP app) then you can use the VoIP background mode. If you want to detect an incoming mobile phone call then you cannot do this in the background.
Related
I have a chat application, developed on the Xamarin.Forms platform, in which users can chat with each other. I have managed c# code and UI both in the shared project.
I have been facing problem since long in iOS platform. When the iOS app is running on screen, having foreground mode then the app can successfully receive a message which has been send by another user. When the app is running in the background mode and someone sends a message, I want to notify the user by using local notification (No Push remote notification - Because I think as my app is already running in minimized mode there is no need to wake up the app by implementing Push notification). Even I have implemented local notification successfully but the problem is,
When the iOS application heads to the background mode, the main thread (task) is paused so, when some user sends a message the app is not able to execute the code (when app is minimized) so that it won’t be able to show the local notification. But when the application is brought back to the foreground the thread/task get resumed and then ie shows up the local notification and also the message.
I already have selected the "Background fetch" property under Background Modes in Info.plist. I have also added below the line in my FinishedLaunching method
UIApplication.SharedApplication.SetMinimumBackgroundFetchInterval(UIApplication.BackgroundFetchIntervalMinimum);
I have already worked and implemented code from below links, but didn’t worked for me.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/ios/app-fundamentals/backgrounding/ios-backgrounding-techniques/
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/ios/app-fundamentals/backgrounding/ios-backgrounding-techniques/ios-backgrounding-with-tasks#performing-tasks-during-didenterbackground
Xamarin forms background tasks run only when app is open on ios
https://arteksoftware.com/backgrounding-with-xamarin-forms/
When an iOS application goes to the background, are lengthy tasks paused?
How to perform a simple background task on Xamarin iOS
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/ios/app-fundamentals/backgrounding/ios-backgrounding-techniques/ios-backgrounding-with-tasks#creating-background-safe-tasks
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/ios/app-fundamentals/backgrounding/
I think my issue is relate to iOS Background processing, So, does anyone has idea what to do, to execute the code when app is already in minimized mode?
Generally speaking, backgrounding is very restricted on iOS. If your app is in a certain category (e.g. Navigation, Music) you'd get extended backgrounding capabilities, but I don't believe that chat apps do. More specifically, Background Fetch is not really suitable for your problem. It is called on an irregular basis to fetch contents to be cached within your app in order to make showing contents to your users faster. Background fetch intervals may vary from 15 min to several hours (not sure about the latter).
What you need is remote notifications.
Remote notifications (also known as push notifications) let you push small amounts of data to devices on which your app is installed, even when your app isn't running.
Remote notifications are brokered via a priviliged service (Apple Push Notification service - APNs) to Apple devices and delivered in a timely manner (seconds rather than minutes or hours). Usually you'd want to keep the payload as little as possible (just send the chat ID for example) and let the app fetch its data when it's notified.
Speaking in terms of a chat application, your chat server would send the remote notification to the APNs whenever a user sends a message to the chat. The app would be notified, fetch additional data and then display the notification to the user. If the notification is tapped, the user would be taken to the chat window for the respective chat.
Please note that your app has to be registered with APNs, otherwise remote notifications won't work.
I am using react-native-notification module to send a local notification when I receive a socket.io event sent from the server. The notification is properly configured and works on both iOS and Android in foreground mode. However, due to the fact that Apple doesn't allow Apps to run on the background except for (Audio, navigation map, etc.), I am not able to receive any socket events when my app is not on the background and temporarily suspended.
I'm therefore not able to send a local notification to the iOS device since the app isn't really running once I switch the app to background.
Here I'm asking for possible solutions to my current problem.
This could be a general question regarding react native or iOS native.
Everything works well on Android devices and I don't think there is anything wrong with my code so I don't know what code I should display here.
In short, I just want to know how to receive socket events when the app is in the background on an iOS device, or if that can't be achieved. I would like to know how most apps even send notifications to their users when their apps are in the background.(I do not want to cheat the system and set the background mode to audio).
I know its a old post but if anyone still wondering, You can send notification even your app is closed or socket disconnected. You can use firebase push notification which will handle your current situation even if your app is killed.
Try below plugin to send notification to both android/ios without using any background service react-native-firebase
I have developed an application that uses Linphone VoIP API to receive incoming calls, but I don't want the user to make outgoing calls (because that's not what my app is supposed to do).
I have enabled VoIP background mode in my .plist but the app got rejected because "it would be appropriate to add a calling-out feature or remove the VoIP background mode". Now I don't want to add call-out features but I totally need VoIP background mode.
How am I supposed to make my app run in background waiting for incoming calls if not using VoIP background mode?
I need a strong answer from someone so that I can get the functionality to work fine and also be approved for the App Store.
There's no way out. I had to implement outgoing calls features.
I'm developing an iOS video chat application. I would like to display a notification like the FaceTime application does when someone calls me.
Currently I use push notifications that show banners, with a message and a custom sound.
Instead I want my app to show a custom screen for an incoming event like someone calling me for example. Is that possible using apple public API's ?
Please, see the FaceTime notification screen below.
Ps.: Skype also uses a different notification screen.
Thanks a lot,
Daniel
I doubt it has anything to do with push notifications, in fact Skype you are mentioning was able to do it before push notifications were available.
Instead iOS gives you some extra features if you create an app with background mode "voip" (voice over ip). This will allow the app to wake up and brought to the foreground once traffic is detected on the network sockets, and applicationWillEnterForeground: is called. And from there you can use any view controller.
If you now think «hmm, my app doesn't offer voip, but I will pretend to do so to get superior notifications» — don't try it, apple will reject any app claims to be a voip app just to get endless background time.
No, push notification dialog is a system dialog which cannot be customized. However FaceTime is Apple's application and they can customize it the way they want, not open to third party developers.
However you can take advantage of iOS 8.0 addition "UIMutableUserNotificationCategory" to customize the actions in the notification:
https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIMutableUserNotificationCategory_class/index.html
Example tutorial:
http://www.thinkandbuild.it/interactive-notifications-with-notification-actions/
I'm not sure how they did it, but Skype managed to get a customized notification when a User receives a call both while the device is locked and while in use.
http://blogs.skype.com/2014/09/22/skype-5-5-for-iphone-answer-skype-calls-in-an-instant/
EDIT: Looks like IOS8 added an Interactive Notifications API. This is likely your next question: How do I make interactive notifications in iOS 8 app?
Is it possible to wake up a background application with a non ios notification center? e.g. if I were creating a calling or messaging application is it possible to wake the application via SMS.
Nope. If you want to call app outside the device, you should use APNS. On the device you can use local notification. Sending SMS to wake up app is kinda wrong. People don't like such solutions - imagine bunch of SMS every day for different apps. Sorry.
No.
If you have background code running, you can schedule a local notification to yourself. If the user clicks "Ok" then you will come to the foreground. See here for a description and sample code.
As far as I can tell, the only ways to launch an app without user input is via a custom URL handler or via an accessory. It doesn't sound like an accessory fits your use case. Sadly you can't open URLs from the background, so you can't use this to wake yourself.