Unfortunately not.
Apple made that opt-out problematic some years back. Turning on the opt-out causes the app to either be at much higher risk of background termination (thus timeline data gaps), or using more energy/battery. Apple clearly don’t want us using that at all.
So the new app doesn’t use it.
I’d love for Apple to change their tune on that! The indicator is incredibly annoying. But at it stands right now, Apple definitely don’t want us to use it, and punish us when we do.
Not yet! But coming soon - probably in the upcoming v1.1 update.
It’s a feature I’m strongly missing myself too. I’ve got a handful of places I’m waiting to merge, to clean up some mess.
Hi @locationaware!
Go straight to the new app. No need for the old one. Personally I effectively never touch the old app anymore myself. The new app is just plain better in almost every way!
Thanks @wivaku! It’s super satisfying to have it finally shipped. It took much longer than I’d hoped, but I’m really happy with the quality of the new app. So… worth it 
Hi @rolandsmash!
Make sure you’re definitely on the newest version of the old app. That update sets a shared profile so that the two apps can be aware of the subscriptions and purchases in each.
If you already have that installed and it’s still not carrying over, try opening the Subscription Settings view in the old app. Maybe that’ll snap it out of some outdated cached data, or some such.
Thanks @hvnctzn! Yeah I’m really happy with the new app too. Now whenever I go into the old app to test or check something (I have to keep it around because it’s my job) the difference is stark. I like the new one so much better! And the recorded data quality and reliability is much higher too.
Oh on that point: one of the next updates, either v1.0.1 or v1.1, will have even more improvements to recording quality. We’re working away at another significant quality upgrade, to deal with noisy and drifty data that can happen during longer visits to some places.
Matt, I’m also keenly awaiting the merge places function.
Two other things it seems the new version doesn’t handle as neatly as the old one.
First, I find that trying to search for locations not in the Arc database but which are in Google Maps does not return those locations. Occasionally, they will later turn up, like Arc is downloading in the background info from Google. But when it does, I don’t get any icons as previously: just a generic marker.
Second, when I stop at a non-descriptive place, the original version would often suggest a street address, which was quite often acceptable for a single visit. The new version does not seem to identify street addresses at all. Is there a way to make it do so? Or is that something that needs to be added?
This looks great, and I can’t wait to try it.
However, I’m having problems getting it to recognize my existing subscription. And to make matters worse, installing the new app (Arc Timeline 4) seems to have messed things up for the old app (Arc Timeline), which is now no longer recognizing my subscription: now when I open either app (old or new), I get the subscription sign-up prompt.
Other relevant details: I have a lifetime subscription. I’ve updated the old app to the latest version (and that doesn’t solve the problem).
Any suggestions for how to fix this?
Edit: Just tried again, a few hours later, and was able to get the “restore purchases” option to work in the old app, which fixed the problem in the old app. Not sure why it didn’t work the first time. And now that I’ve done that, the new app recognizes my subscription. So everything seems to be working now. (And if anyone has a similar problem, I’d suggest they try waiting a few hours and then doing “restore purchases” in the old app.)
After doing that, works fine for me. Not sure if it made a difference but I re-installed Testflight version, opened the subscription settings in old app, and then re-installed from App Store. Not sure if some check is only on first app run.
Hey Matt! Would you like us to keep using the testflight as well, or will all future updates go straight through the appstore?
Oh nevermind, it looks like it automatically converted.
Anyways, as a silly side note, what are the chances we could get a combine lifetime subscription for this and that, LB, and timeline? Before I pull the trigger on it. 
This is actually a weird Google Places bug/quirk!
The app is showing you everything that Google Places returned. But sometimes Google Places just doesn’t find what you asked for the first time. It’s like, you search for “Starbucks” and it comes back “nope, no Starbucks around here”. Then you delete a letter, “Starbuck”, then add the S back, “Starbucks”, and Google Places comes back with “oh wait I found it!” 
I’ve looked into this one a couple of times now, because it’s so weird. But yeah, the app’s genuinely showing what Google Places returns for the query. It just seems to sometimes take it a moment to realise it’s got something, so it doesn’t tell us until the second time we ask 
Ah this one’s on me. Every place has one or more “categories”, and I need to manually match those up with icons. There’s probably still a whole bunch I haven’t matched up yet in the new app. I’ll get onto that!
Something that needs to be added. But it’s already on my todos! Shouldn’t be too difficult go get in, so shouldn’t be too far away. I expect it’ll arrive in one of the upcoming updates in the next week or two (or three, depending on which things I manage to squeeze into each update).
Phew! Glad to hear that @roberton3. Yeah there seems to be some caching weirdness, either at App Store layer or RevenueCat layer (the middleware that manages the shared subscription states between the two apps). They all should be updating to current correct state immediately, but it seems like often they’re not. A bit frustrating! But it does seem like they eventually get there in the end.
I’m thinking probably for now we’ll stop doing the TestFlight builds. There’s probably no need anymore, or at least not until there’s something super major happening, that requires a new series of beta releases before hitting the App Store.
Good question! To be honest hardly anyone cares about Life Balance or This & That, so I haven’t paid much attention to their subscription options in a long time.
Those apps are either too niche or in already saturated markets. Life Balance was never going to be a big earner 
I only ever shipped it to the App Store because I figured why not. I’d built it purely for myself, then figured might as well let others use it too, if they really did like it better than the million other similar apps out there.
But yeah, it does make sense to have a single lifetime or a single sub that covers all three apps. I’ll put some thought into it. Though I don’t think I’ll make any moves on it in the near term. I’m going to be working pretty hard to get v1.0.1 and v1.1 updates out quickly, then probably still keeping the momentum up for a v1.2 release too, so I won’t have much mental space for business side stuff for a bit.
But… I will file an issue for it, to schedule some time for thinking it through. If it’s in the issue tracker it’s harder for it to slip through the cracks.
Oh one thing I forgot to add to the initial release post above: All subscriptions and Lifetime purchases in the new app are enabled for Family Sharing!
In the old app Lifetime purchases couldn’t do Family Sharing, because App Store reasons. But in the new app it’s turned on for all 
This is a bummer. I like everything about the new version except this.
I’m fine with Arc tracking my location all the time, but the always-on icon makes it harder to notice when other apps access my location unexpectedly. The old version worked well for me. I rarely notice data gaps, and the notification nudge when the OS killed it felt like a reasonable tradeoff.
My concern is UX fatigue. If I get used to the icon always being on, I lose an important signal for spotting apps that might be accessing my location without me realizing it.
I totally get why it has to be this way, and as an engineer myself, I understand how problematic it could be to support both methods in the long run. But I am still curious: would you consider allowing users to choose between the old and new methods?
@zzyzxd Yeah I agree it’s not a good situation. The indicator ruins an otherwise useful and valuable iOS feature.
Unfortunately not.
In the old app I repeatedly had serious customer support and App Store ratings issues due to having that option. Apple periodically in iOS updates changed conditions without documentation or explanation, such that the app was penalised due to using the option.
I’d get floods of people getting extreme data gaps, the app unable to stay alive at all, or being terminated randomly but frequently. After one of the times Apple did this I escalated to a technical ticket with them and their response was that I had to set “desired accuracy” much higher, to avoid the terminations, which has significant energy use harms. (Though surprisingly most people didn’t notice that, or at least seemed to accept the tradeoff).
But in a fight between me - one solo developer - and Apple, I’m going to lose every time. So I’ve conceded defeat and not going to attempt to use that option ever again. If Apple want to change their minds on it, that’d be great. But I don’t have the power to make them do that.
The ideal would be for Apple to add a per app setting in Settings app to disable the indicator. That would give users the option themselves, no hacks in apps required. Explicit user intent. But I don’t see Apple rushing to do that unless we keep telling them we hate what they’re doing now.
So yeah, I think the best we have at this point is complaining to Apple. Let them know we want the option to turn that indicator off. The complaints are unlikely to achieve anything, so it’s a deeply unsatisfying endpoint, but I think it’s where we’re at now.
Just quick note to say how fast and responsive this is to use now - amazing work!
Hi Matt, thank you for the effort you put into this new version! I had the beta version installed some months ago, I thought I have always left the app running in the background so I didn’t check the app very often. I installed the App Store version today and it took some time saying something like updating database, and when it finished updating, I found that my data was not tracked for 20 days. I still have the tracking data on the old arc timeline app and arc recorder, is there a way that I could import these data manually? Thanks
The update looks great but the indicator always on is a complete dealbreaker. Obviously it would be great if Apple could let us turn this off but right now they don’t. I think it’s crucial that if the old version worked without showing the indicator, however that worked, that that’s available. Otherwise for me at least I can’t use this as is.