Since the last update (which may have been around the same time as my update to iOS 18 now that I think about it) I have many problems. Off the top of my head:
I need to spend a lot more time cleaning up the timeline (not because of the new interface, just because many places are not recognized, or stops are not detected in a route. making changes in the timeline also often triggers an automatic update that takes a long time to finish.)
the app often opens to a black screen, I have to kill it and restart it then
sometimes the app opens to a white screen. that mostly solves itself after a few minutes but nothing gets recorded in that time.
I often see track that are much longer than they should be, often this is because of jumps on those track. (difficult to explain, I’ve included a screenshot)
1 very strange issue: a 2 hour stay at home contains within it a trip to pick up my kid from school (a few kilometers) and there is no way to split this out.
sometimes when I am in the timeline view and want to go 1 day back with the left arrow, that arrow just disappears, need to kill the app to get it back
my home location is often not recognized, stays as Unknown Place but when I click “edit”, Home is the first suggestion and the only one without a distance. (this is actually not new, the app has done this for as long as I can remember)
timeline items are not unique. 1 example from today: I stayed at work from 8:49 to 12:04 (3h15m) and also from 8:54 tot 12:04 (3h10m). why is this not just 1 visit?
Some context:
this is on an iPhone 13 mini running iOS 18
Arc recorder is running in the background
I have been using Arc since 2018 (can a lot of data cause issues?)
I have 2 automations running: each morning iOS automatically starts Arc and I let iOS automatically start Arc whenever I connect to CarPlay. (this was because the app was often killed by iOS in the past and I lost a lot of data before discovering that. Maybe less needed today, but I don’t think it can hurt.)
(sorry that I updated my app review for this, I should indeed have come to the forum first)
That’s a lot of problems. I’m not sure if they’re all related or not, so I’ll work down the list in order and see if I can make sense of each. Though most of them are quite unusual, so I’m not sure that I’ll have good answers. Anyway, diving in:
The first two issues - needing lots of cleanup / incorrect place and trip detections / long processing times, and the app opening to a black screen, those two issue clusters sound related to me. The latter being a result of the former. It sounds like Arc is getting bogged down doing processing, struggling to make sense of the timeline data, which is sometimes creating a backlog and potentially making the app freeze up for periods of time. That could then result in the app taking too long to “grow a head” (build its UI) when it comes into the foreground. The opening to a white screen, likewise probably a variation on the same.
Your screenshot with what appears to be two diverging paths but within the same time period… that looks like it’s the result of two apps recording at the same time. Are you also running Arc Mini or Arc Recorder? I think from your App Store review you mentioned Arc Recorder? If so, make sure it’s updated to the latest version.
There was a communication issue between Arc Timeline and Arc Recorder in the very first Arc Recorder release, which was fixed in the subsequent update. You should have v1.0.1 installed. Without that update, sometimes the apps could end up both recording at the same time, without realising, and creating weird double ups like that.
This also sounds like it could be the result of Arc Timeline and Arc Recorder clobbering each other, trying to record at the same time. So yeah, hopefully it’s just a case of Arc Recorder not being up to date! If however you are already on Arc Recorder 1.0.1… there’s a deeper mystery, and one that I don’t have any good ideas about yet.
Most of the problems you’ve described so far could potentially be a result of the two apps trying to record at the same time. When they do that they can create really weird timeline data that the processing engine can’t make sense of, which could result in it churning away trying to process it but failing, and potentially also making a bigger mess. Which could then result in the app running slower, freezing, etc.
Well that’s odd. I’ve never seen that before. Although… I guess that could be another symptom of the timeline processor getting bogged down, and blocking other things from happening while it’s churning away.
Hmm. This one could be something separate. Although the fact that it says as Unknown Place instead of having a different incorrect place assigned, that’s pretty weird. Usually when someone’s Home place doesn’t get correctly auto assigned it means there’s another nearby place in the list that’s accidentally had some visits confirmed that should’ve been assigned to Home instead, which then confuses the place classifier, causing it to be uncertain and then sometimes make the wrong choice.
But for it to stay with Unknown Place… I wonder if this is related to the clogged up timeline processing / messy timeline data. If Home the only place in the list that’s got no distance noted (which means it’s directly overlapping the visit, ie a perfect geographical match) then the place classifier doesn’t have any decision to make - there’s only one option that fits, and it should always choose it. For it to choose nothing (ie leaving it as “Unknown Place”, meaning no place assigned) … that indicates that the place classifier hasn’t even had a chance to do its job.
Ok this also sounds like a likely symptom of the Arc Timeline / Arc Recorder recording clash, with both trying to record at the same time. They might create separate visits, which should then get automatically merged, but the processing engine might in some cases not be able to make sense of it, thus leaving a mess like that.
I really hope it’s just a case of Arc Recorder being out of date! Because that could explain almost all the problems, and with that update hopefully fix almost all of them! If Arc Recorder really is already up to date… there’s some very weird gremlin activity going on.
For these, I’m guessing they’re just safety catches, to get it started in cases where iOS might have killed it? You’re not actively swiping it closed yourself? If so, then they seem fine to me. Though having Arc Recorder also running should protect you from data gaps, given that it runs with an extremely low memory profile, making it very unlikely to be killed by iOS. (On my main phone Arc Recorder has been running for over a week uninterrupted).
Ok, so, fingers crossed it’s just Arc Recorder being out of date If that’s not the case… I might have to send you a debug build with debug logging, so we can do some testing and get some logs to see clearer what’s going on under the hood. Because yeah, it’s pretty weird behaviour!
Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s pretty common for people to have 6+ years of Arc data. The app should cope fine with that under normal conditions. For most cases, it only needs to actually load a small portion of the data at a time, eg just the current day when viewing the day timeline view - that kind of thing.
There are some scheduled housekeeping tasks that run overnight that can churn through a lot more data, but they’re all optimised to cope with large databases with many years of data. My own database goes back to 2016, and until recently my main phone was an iPhone 13 Pro, which was never stressed by it.
Oh, if you’re also running Arc Mini, ditch that. No need for three apps running. Arc Timeline and Arc Recorder work well together, and should be enough to protect from data gaps.
If Arc Mini is also in the mix, there could be another communication breakdown. Though I’m not aware of one with Mini at the moment, but it isn’t entire implausible.
Thanks for the fast and extensive response. I do keep all apps up to date so Arc Recorder is at 1.0.1.
I don’t use Arc mini that often but when I do, I don’t think I kill it afterwards so I have now done that and uninstalled it. So now it’s just the main Arc app and Arc recorder running. I’ll give it a few days like that.
Would other apps using location interfere? like apple maps or waze? I guess not as that would be quite common.
Ah, hopefully that was it! I’m betting Mini was having a communication fail with the other two, and trying to record over the top of them, creating messy timeline data that the processing engine was becoming endlessly confused by.
Aside: Swiping any of the Arc family of apps closed will only stop them temporarily - they’ll get auto restarted by iOS some minutes later (most of the time - it’s not guaranteed to happen).
Those should be fine. The only interaction with other location / navigation apps that I’m aware of is CarPlay and/or Google Maps navigation sessions while plugged in to power in a car, which for some reason can overload things and cause Arc to get terminated.
My assumption in that case is that it’s either a memory use thing or a device temperature. It seems that if the phone isn’t plugged in there’s less risk of termination, so that leans towards the device temperature theory - phones heat up when they’re charging, and navigation sessions request the highest location data accuracy (higher than Arc requests), which means higher sampling rate, higher CPU usage, and higher device temperature.
If that’s not the case… I might have to send you a debug build with debug logging, so we can do some testing and get some logs to see clearer what’s going on under the hood. Because yeah, it’s pretty weird behaviour!