Hi,
Unfortunately, a while ago, ARC became pretty much unusable on my device. (iPhone 8, iOS 14.7.1)
Have the version 3.5.0. When I open up ARC, it takes unusually long to even display anything coherent (sometimes up to several minutes). Sometimes it closes during that time after opening. If I press something, such as “go back 1 day”, it usually takes several minutes to react, and usually that reaction is that the app closes. Scrolling up and down the list of movements is pretty much the only thing which is crash-free, but here too it also takes many minutes for the scrolling to actually happen.
Is there anything which can be done? (Apart from the obvious … force restart… done that multiple times of course)
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So, two relevant updates on this:
- While reading about seemingly unrelated issues & solutions on this forum, I learned about the new backup system which I was previously unaware of. With some difficulty I managed to get to the backup settings, and turned off the backup. Things run a lot smoother since. Also since re-enabling the backup! I can generally use the app again, to some degree.
It’s a mixed bag though: sometimes the GUI is as responsive as I once remember it being (i.e., it immediately scrolls, etc), but sometimes, it’ll sit completely frozen on the same screen for a while before reacting to my input.
- In many of the aforementioned moments where the app is frozen, the actual crash is most likely if I exit via the home button (this works immediately), then re-open ARC. Then it’ll return to the same frozen screen for 5-10 seconds, and then close itself without further interaction.
It’s probably important to distinguish between “completely frozen”, where >Home>ARC causes a crash – and the other case where ARC is doing the spinning wheel thing when it’s processing (and scrolling up/down responds). In the latter case, going >Home>ARC doesn’t crash anything and works as I’d expect.
These observations are made with recording disabled, and automatic daily & monthly exports also disabled.
Hi @3perf!
I’m currently working on debugging the UI freezes, that have become more frequent since a recent iOS update / Arc update combo. I haven’t found the exact cause yet, but it’s a big part of my daily work at the moment, so I’ll find something soon.
For the backup system, one thing that’s helpful to know is that Arc will run the backups while the app is in the foreground if the phone is plugged in to power (and if the backups are out of date, thus needing extra effort to get them up moving).
That means that Arc will be doing more work in the foreground while plugged in to power, which can increase the risk of UI freezes or slow UI responses. That’s probably why you’ve seen things improve since turning off backups (assuming you’re using the phone while plugged in to power, otherwise this isn’t really relevant advice).
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Hi Matt,
thanks - that’s fantastic! 
Glad to hear that you’re aware of the freezes and are working on them.
Plugged in or not, doesn’t seem to make any perceivable difference to the GUI on my phone.
For me, the noticeable change was disabling the backups once, and the improvement remained after reactivating them. Before, it was so slow that it never displayed any of the recent weeks in the GUI (and I thought it had failed to record anything) – now at least it’s showing me the stuff I did while on holiday. Possible that the new backup was getting hung up on some detail in my 8 yrs of location history, and became unstuck by toggling the backups off/on?
Keep up the good work.
Yeah I’m not sure what to make of that one. It doesn’t sound quite right, but it also doesn’t sound entirely impossible. But then there is a whole lot going on under the hood with Arc - a lot of different subsystems interacting at different times - so it’s often hard to pin down what’s going on with various weird situations.
As long as it’s working better, that’s good news 
And I’m hoping to have the new faster build out within the next few days.