Apps send location information to Urban Airship at a certain frequency, which depends upon how location has been implemented in the app and restrictions imposed by the operating system.
Location on iOS:
iOS will gather locations by significant change if you set it up using Location Targeting. You can choose to gather location data in the following instances:
- when the app in the foreground,
- when the app is both in the foreground and in the background.
- when the user opens the app.
- when the user performs a particular action in the app.
Apple provides more information about Getting the User’s Location.
Location on Android:
You can set up the app to gather coarse location or fine location. For more information on location for Android see:
- Urban Airship docs: Location Targeting
- Android developer docs: Location Strategies
Location data is included in analytics updates
We will receive analytics updates from an app via our library on a regular basis. Whenever one of these updates includes location information, we will store that data in our system.
Location data is specific to the time of a scheduled push
If you schedule a push for a certain time, we will look up which devices meet the location criteria you defined when that time arrives.
For example, you schedule a push in the morning (9am) to send in the evening (6pm). You select to push to everyone that has been in Portland in the last 24 hours. We will look up the location data for devices that have been in Portland in the last 24 hours back from 6pm, not from that morning (9am).
Related Content:
- Using Location History Segments via the API
- Using Historical Location with your Segments
- Troubleshooting location pushes