Thank you for your continued attention to BIG-835 and for reviewing the logs. However, after several weeks of investigating repeated silent recording interruptions, I feel we are going in circles without a practical safeguard for users.
I rely on Arc Timeline to document my professional journeys. If recording stops silently for hours, I cannot know whether a journey has been missed, and missing location data generally cannot be recovered afterwards. Checking Arc manually before every professional journey defeats the purpose of automatic tracking.
For me, the priority is therefore a reliable warning when recording is no longer working, rather than simply investigating each new gap after the fact.
Matt, I believe you previously mentioned that Arc had some form of warning or monitoring mechanism in the past. Could you please clarify:
What exactly did that earlier warning feature do, and why was it removed or changed?
Is it technically possible on current iOS versions to restore a reliable notification or another proactive safeguard? I understand that iOS may restrict what a terminated app can do, so an explanation of the practical options would help.
Is there a concrete plan or expected timeframe to address this? If a direct alarm is impossible, what alternative can alert users before they unknowingly lose professional journeys?
I appreciate your work and understand the iOS constraints, but silent failures make Arc difficult to rely on for professional use. I would really appreciate a clear answer on the warning mechanism and next steps.
It was a “dead man’s switch”. A local notification set to be delivered in ~1 hour in the future. While the app was alive, that would be constantly updated to have a delivery date in the future. If the app was terminated that notification would then arrive, because the app wasn’t there to update the delivery date.
That would then give you a notification telling you the app had been terminated.
Possible, yes! That dead man’s switch can come back. It was in the old app, but wasn’t built into the new one, because my impression was that most people didn’t like it, disabling notifications, or just ignoring it. But there’s been interest in bringing it back, so I will.
However “reliable” is something that comes with caveats. Everything the app does is restricted by iOS’s whims.
The background terminations you’re seeing will be iOS making decisions about which apps it wants running, and seemingly isn’t logging those decisions (nor are they showing up as crashes with crash reports). Likewise the automatic restarting is down to iOS’s mood in the moment, both in how timely it will be and in whether it will happen at all. This also goes for the Home Screen widget’s updates - iOS can decide to not update that as requested, leaving it with stale content, saying that the app is alive when it isn’t.
And then the same goes for the dead man’s switch notifications. iOS can decide to not deliver those at the requested time. Though in practice local notifications do tend to arrive when they’re meant to, while remote notifications can be less reliable. So the good thing there is that they’re local notifications, not remote.
I’ll wait for Claude’s answer on that. I intentionally stay mostly out of the release planning now, and certainly out of the discussion here on what will be coming and when. I’ve got a history of saying “it’ll be in the next update!” then it not arriving, due to various release time pressures. Claude will have the more authoritative and measured answer there.
Understood. It’s a frustrating situation. It would be far preferable to have iOS commit to honouring requests, at the times requested, and also not randomly terminating apps. The way that iOS works puts apps like Arc in a difficult position. But that’s Apple’s decision, not ours.
Oh there’s also the Arc Recorder companion app, which is the other safety net we do plan on bringing back. I’m not sure if the details of that have been discussed already. If not Claude can fill you in.
But yeah, those are the two remaining levers we actually have. The dead man’s switch notifications, and Arc Recorder as companion recording app.
Though even with both of those in place, there’s still remaining risk, due to iOS just not working how we want. So strong commitments to uptime can’t be made. If iOS wants all background apps gone (including both Arc and Arc Recorder) that’s what it’ll do, and we’re not in a position to argue.
That said, the dead man’s switch and Arc Recorder should reduce the data gaps risk down low enough to be tolerable.
Oh one thing I can say on release timing is: 1.7.6 was submitted to the App Store today, so should go live tomorrow. It doesn’t contain anything of use to you in this case though, but 1.7.7 is still in the planning stages. I do get the impression though that the team have settled on it having a specific shape already, that might not have room for more.
My mixed working holiday period is over in a few days, so I’ll pleasingly be back to working full days (I’m not good at being off work!). So we’ll hopefully be back to roughly a new release every week.
Your vote on the Arc Recorder ticket (BIG-156) will put it third equal from top in vote counts. The ticket for the dead man’s switch notifications (BIG-541) already has your vote, and is fifth equal in vote counts. So they’re both high up the list.
BIG-541 is the easier one to get done, so I’d expect we can squeeze that one in sooner rather than later. While BIG-156 is going to be a chunkier task, but is the higher up in vote counts. So for both it’s looking promising, I think.
@JFRoch Thank you for the 17 October test; it’s on BIG-835 as you asked. If you’d like the two logs on it too, email works (matt@bigpaua.com, thread number in the subject), since the forum doesn’t take .log files.
On timing, since Matt handed that to me: I’m not naming a release. Both tickets are live and high on the list. BIG-541, the dead man’s switch notification, is the smaller piece of work and carries your vote alongside others’. BIG-156, Arc Recorder for Arc Timeline 4, is still High priority and still in the pool the next feature release gets picked from, and your vote is on it now too, as Matt said. Matt’s #23 stands as he put it: BIG-541 is the easier one to get done, so he’d expect it sooner rather than later. When either ships, I’ll say so in this thread.
What Arc Recorder is, since Matt offered: a second, minimal app that shares its recording with Arc Timeline, one recording while the other stands by, so if iOS stops one the other can take over; though, as Matt said, iOS can stop both. It exists today for Arc Timeline 3; BIG-156 is the work to pair it with Arc Timeline 4. In the meantime, the widget also comes in a Lock Screen size, which puts “Recording stopped?” where you see it each time you pick up the phone, with Matt’s caveat that iOS can leave it showing an old state.
@JFRoch As promised: BIG-541 is in 1.7.7, out today. It’s rolling out over the week; if your iPhone hasn’t updated on its own yet, tapping Update on Arc Timeline’s App Store page gets it now.
It’s off by default: in Settings, under Timeline Recording, turn on Notify if Recording Stops, and allow notifications when asked. It’s the dead man’s switch Matt described in #22: it sends a notification if iOS stops Arc Timeline in the background and doesn’t restart it. Matt’s caveat from #22 applies: iOS can decide not to deliver it at the requested time, though in practice local notifications like this one do tend to arrive when they’re meant to.
BIG-156, Arc Recorder, is still High, still in the pool, and I’m not naming a release for it. When it ships, I’ll say so here.