Routines / Automations with new software

[squash20]

Looking for some help with the new Geofencing strategy. I've tried to create a custom mode using schedules, but the performance is so inconsistent that it drove me back to using Automations. And, while my setup works "most" of the time, it drives me crazy that I cannot get it to work all the time.

here's my setup:

2 devices are connected for Geofencing (my phone + my wife's phone)

Schedules: Simple...sunrise change to Standby and sunset change to Arm Home, but with one catch. I have also added actions to each of them to Enable/Disable some automations. at Sunrise I disable "arrive home night" automation, and enable "arrive home day" automation. At Sunset, the opposite.

Then the Arrive/Leave automations I have created are this:

   - Leave Home (everyone leaves) - Disable both sunrise/sunset schedules and change to arm away. This ensures that if everyone is gone for more than a schedule change (say vacation, work trip, whatever) that the schedules disable and system stays armed

   - Arrive Home Day (anyone arrives) - Enable both sunrise/sunset schedules and change mode to Standby. again, this is during the day time so I want the system in standby.

   - Arrive Home night (anyone arrives) - Enable both sunrise/sunset schedules and change mode to Arm Home. unlike arriving during the day, if I arrive home at night I want the system to flip from Arm Away to Arm home to remain armed during the night.

For the most part everything works "most" of the time. But, there are situations where the system doesn't react correctly. and the maddening part is that its identical situations where sometimes it reacts differently. For example, my wife and I walk every morning at about 5am. Just around the neighborhood. This is before sunrise. now, ~80% of the time it works perfectly...we cross the geofence and system flips to Arm Away. Upon returning before sunrise, system flips back to Arm home. But, sometimes we get home from the walk and the system doesn't recognize we've crossed the geofence perimeter and it stays in Arm Away. Its beyond frustrating because then we are triggering the cameras and all day long while we are home delivery people, our own kids, etc. are triggering the cameras and draining the battery. But like I said, its not all the time...its only about 20% of the time. And I've noticed little nuances all over like this where it seems to be a geofence issue where it just doesn't pick up the devices as we cross the geofence line. Is there any way to fix this or is this just the way it is with this new geofence software strategy of "crossing the line" vs constant monitoring of "being in the circle"?

[johnsyweb]

I had a very similar experience and have a support ticket that has been open for weeks.

Over the weekend I gave up waiting and removed all phones from the setup as well as all schedules and automations and recreated them from scratch. This worked!

https://www.johnsy.com/blog/2026/04/12/arlo-geofencing-workaround/

[DannyBearAgain]

I usually find I need to have the mobiles plugged into external power when crossing the geofencing zone to have them reliably trigger the change.

[StephenB]

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@squash20 wrote:

For the most part everything works "most" of the time. But, there are situations where the system doesn't react correctly. and the maddening part is that its identical situations where sometimes it reacts differently. For example, my wife and I walk every morning at about 5am. Just around the neighborhood. This is before sunrise. now, ~80% of the time it works perfectly...we cross the geofence and system flips to Arm Away. Upon returning before sunrise, system flips back to Arm home. But, sometimes we get home from the walk and the system doesn't recognize we've crossed the geofence perimeter and it stays in Arm Away.

But like I said, its not all the time...its only about 20% of the time.

I see that also (and others have also reported it here).  FWIW, I saw some posts complaining about geofencing reliability with the older interface also, so I don't think this is completely new behavior.  

I am hoping this will improve when they complete custom modes.  80% performance isn't anywhere close to good enough.

[jguerdat]

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@squash20 wrote:

here's my setup:

2 devices are connected for Geofencing (my phone + my wife's phone)

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Are the phones iOS or Android? I've had many fewer issues with GF on Android compared to what has been posted here on iOS.

[squash20]

The phones we are using are iOS…iPhone15 on both. Yeah, seems very wonky to experience intermittent performance. I saw someone above post that it seems better when plugged into power, but that’s a bit impractical. It really is a shame that the new software was rolled out with so many bugs.

[squash20]

And now the past 4 days the geofence automations I created have 💯 completely stopped working. What a joke! Yes, location services are ‘always on’ with both devices that I’ve been using to trigger the arrive/leave automations.

The sunrise/sunset schedules I created still work, but the arrive/leave automations now do nothing. This is a joke and I’m about ready to just get rid of this garbage and switch to a better brand.

[StephenB]

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@squash20 wrote:

And now the past 4 days the geofence automations I created have 💯 completely stopped working. What a joke! Yes, location services are ‘always on’ with both devices that I’ve been using to trigger the arrive/leave automations.

The sunrise/sunset schedules I created still work, but the arrive/leave automations now do nothing.

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Are the automations still enabled in the mode you are using?

Have you double-checked the geofencing devices list?  Sometimes we've seen an extra device get added, which can cause the system to misbehave if you use "everyone leaves" 

[squash20]

Yep, the arrive/leave automations are still enabled on all the modes that I’m using them in.

and yes, I’ve checked the geofencing devices listed and it is still only 2 devices with email addresses listed on those devices that align correctly. One device is iphone15 with my email and the other device is iphone15 with my wife’s email. I have my leave automation set to “everyone” leaves and my arrive automation set to “anyone” arrives.

I have noticed that SOMETIMES when I go into the arrive/leave automations to check them that it lists 2 devices but SOMETIMES my email is next to BOTH of them, which is weird. I usually back out and close the app and reopen it and then miraculously the email addresses update and appear correctly. But even that glitchy phenomenon was occurring back when the geofence automation was working 80% of the time for me.

see below screenshots. I literally just grabbed these. Logged in and my email address was shown for both devices…closed the app went back to the same automation and like magic now it shows different email addresses. I blacked out the emails to be discrete but left enough to show what I mean.

first view:

Second view after closing app and reopening

but like I said, that’s been happening for over a month now and up until a few days ago geofence automations were still working most of the time despite the goofy temporary appearance of duplicated email addresses.

[StephenB]

Might be worth editing the name of your device - something like Josh's iPhone Pro just to make it clear which one is your device.

On leave, maybe try switching from "all" to selecting both phones in the automation.

[squash20]

not a bad idea. I'll try renaming the devices so they have custom names to the unique users and will try to mess with the arrive/leave automation toggles.

[johnsyweb]

I had a very similar experience and have a support ticket that has been open for weeks.

Over the weekend I gave up waiting and removed all phones from the setup as well as all schedules and automations and recreated them from scratch. This worked!

https://www.johnsy.com/blog/2026/04/12/arlo-geofencing-workaround/