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GeneralMeow · ‎2025-04-25

Is there a fix for the Arlo App not being accurate with its location for Geo fencing?

I have other apps on my phone like Nest and Abode that work fine when I leave and enter "Home" area.

I have also reinstalled the app, made sure precise location is allowed all the time, etc. It is more often way behind when it thinks i'm "Home".

BrookeN · ‎2025-05-06

Are you still seeing this same behavior?

GeneralMeow · ‎2025-05-07

@BrookeN yes. just today I came home and heard the camera covers open and close multiple times with notifications from the app going in and out of "Home" mode.

The other apps on my phone all knew I was home, and didnt flap in and out of Home and Away.

BrookeN · ‎2025-06-02

Can you please send a screenshot of what you are seeing.

GeneralMeow · ‎2025-08-22

Attached is the latest "error".

While I live in a rural area and i'm in and out of signal all the time. It seems that when i get this error, the Arlo App seems to not know where I am even after I am back in signal range and/or on WiFi.

Like I mentioned before, the rest of my Geofencing apps recover just fine and dont throw an error. My home security geofence 99.8% of the time knows when i get home. Nest app as well. Arlo App stays dumb, then maybe an hour later I can here the camera shutters closing as it finally figured out where I am.

Its like the App is not using GPS and only relying on cell towers, even thos permissions are set for "Precise Location"

BrookeN · ‎2025-08-29

This Geofencing error message is normal/common when Arlo detects that there's no active internet connection. You need to logout from the app and log back in so Geofencing/Location services will work again instantly. Sometimes, because of network/connectivity issues, Arlo can't update the location instantly, it will take time sometimes. So, the best way is to logout/log back in to send a new request to the BE and Arlo will update them instantly.

alex_loo · ‎2025-10-06

@GeneralMeow wrote:
Is there a fix for the Arlo App not being accurate with its location for Geo fencing?

I have other apps on my phone like Nest and Abode that work fine when I leave and enter "Home" area.

I have also reinstalled the app, made sure precise location is allowed all the time, etc. It is more often way behind when it thinks i'm "Home".

as for my 17 months of owner experience with ARLO, no. Geofencing has never been working propertly for me. I have even logged my error cases in this separate thread. No update, no response, no fix.

But if you find your geofencing fixed and working nicely, please let me know.

Alex

BrookeN · ‎2025-10-08

@alex_loo your post do get responses. Scheduling with Geofencing is still being investigated. I will update you and the community as soon as there is a resolution.

GeneralMeow · ‎2025-10-08

@alex_loo wrote:
as for my 17 months of owner experience with ARLO, no. Geofencing has never been working propertly for me. I have even logged my error cases in this separate thread. No update, no response, no fix.

But if you find your geofencing fixed and working nicely, please let me know.

Alex

@alex_loo My geofencing still is unreliable. It used to work fine like 3-5 years ago.

I suspect it has something to do with either Arlo App isn't using the location services API on the phone correctly (in an attempt to save battery?) or it doesnt have reliable communication retry back to the mothership to control location of Home or Away.

alex_loo · ‎2025-10-09

@BrookeN wrote:
@alex_looyour post do get responses. Scheduling with Geofencing is still being investigated. I will update you and the community as soon as there is a resolution.

1. I did get a few responses but to be honest they were useless. Got a tech team contact asking me to send log, which I did, and then no updates. And of course the same geofencing bugs continues.

2. Not too sure what you mean by "scheduling by geofencing". Scheduling and geofencing are unrelated to each other, though both change modes. Scheduling is scheduling, ie "schedules" under "automation". It is only time triggered, and has nothing to do with geofencing. Geofencing is "Arrive/leave" under "automation". It is NOT time but geofencing triggered, and has nothing to do with (time-triggered) schedules.

What exactly is "still being investigated"? What error cases is the dev team fixing?

Kindly advise.

Alex

alex_loo · ‎2025-10-09

@GeneralMeow wrote:
@alex_loo wrote:
as for my 17 months of owner experience with ARLO, no. Geofencing has never been working propertly for me. I have even logged my error cases in this separate thread. No update, no response, no fix.

But if you find your geofencing fixed and working nicely, please let me know.

Alex
@alex_loo My geofencing still is unreliable. It used to work fine like 3-5 years ago.

I suspect it has something to do with either Arlo App isn't using the location services API on the phone correctly (in an attempt to save battery?) or it doesnt have reliable communication retry back to the mothership to control location of Home or Away.

to be honest, I don't know the root cause behind. Arlo dev team is the best one to answer and fix the geofencing issues.

Alex

StephenB · ‎2025-10-09

@alex_loo wrote:

2. Not too sure what you mean by "scheduling by geofencing". Scheduling and geofencing are unrelated to each other, though both change modes. Scheduling is scheduling, ie "schedules" under "automation". It is only time triggered, and has nothing to do with geofencing. Geofencing is "Arrive/leave" under "automation". It is NOT time but geofencing triggered, and has nothing to do with (time-triggered) schedules.

While the automations are independent with "Feed", from a user perspective geofencing and scheduling are certainly linked. Many people want a schedule when they are home, but not when they are away. And even if the reliability bugs were fixed, the design still doesn't handle resuming the schedule when you arrive home.

alex_loo · ‎2025-10-12

@StephenB wrote:
@alex_loo wrote:
2. Not too sure what you mean by "scheduling by geofencing". Scheduling and geofencing are unrelated to each other, though both change modes. Scheduling is scheduling, ie "schedules" under "automation". It is only time triggered, and has nothing to do with geofencing. Geofencing is "Arrive/leave" under "automation". It is NOT time but geofencing triggered, and has nothing to do with (time-triggered) schedules.

While the automations are independent with "Feed", from a user perspective geofencing and scheduling are certainly linked. Many people want a schedule when they are home, but not when they are away. And even if the reliability bugs were fixed, the design still doesn't handle resuming the schedule when you arrive home.

if this is a response from a "user" (who is "not working for ARLO"), I can only say I respect your opinion but I disagree.

if this is an official response on behalf of ARLO, I'd be further disappointed. Since this is side-tracking and avoiding answering my original question (what exactly is being looked into/ fixed by ARLO) by confusing forum "feed" users here between geofencing and scheduling. I have a strong feeling that ARLO is simply not fixing anything, since in the first hand it has no idea what has long been going wrong.

Alex

StephenB · ‎2025-10-13

@alex_loo wrote:
If this is a response from a "user" (who is "not working for ARLO"), I can only say I respect your opinion but I disagree.

As you know, I do not work for Arlo. No idea what you disagree with. I said that

geofencing has a significant design flaw, since you cannot resume the schedule when you arrive, you instead need to select a fixed mode.
there are bugs in both Arrive and Leave (neither works reliably).

Both of which you know are true.

I didn't respond to your question on what is still being investigated (since I don't know) - just to your comments on "scheduling by geofencing" (although @BrookeN actually said "scheduling with geofencing"). IMO users do expect the combination to work, and IMO there is a linkage (in other words, the design flaw needs to be addressed).

GeneralMeow · ‎2025-10-14

@StephenB wrote:
Both of which you know are true.

I didn't respond to your question on what is still being investigated (since I don't know) - just to your comments on "scheduling by geofencing" (although @BrookeN actually said "scheduling with geofencing"). IMO users do expect the combination to work, and IMO there is a linkage (in other words, the design flaw needs to be addressed).

@StephenB not sure i'm following. Did Arlo state somewhere geofencing is officially broken? All I can see from other users and from my own encounters where Arlo says that everything is great and must be me and/or my phone.

Today I got the recurring Arlo App killing the battery due to geofencing enabled. I can't deal with it anymore and completely disabled the routines and relegated the App to "Restricted background" usage.

alex_loo · ‎2025-10-14

@GeneralMeow wrote:
@StephenB wrote:
Both of which you know are true.

I didn't respond to your question on what is still being investigated (since I don't know) - just to your comments on "scheduling by geofencing" (although @BrookeN actually said "scheduling with geofencing"). IMO users do expect the combination to work, and IMO there is a linkage (in other words, the design flaw needs to be addressed).

@StephenB not sure i'm following. Did Arlo state somewhere geofencing is officially broken? All I can see from other users and from my own encounters where Arlo says that everything is great and must be me and/or my phone.

@GeneralMeow they sometimes say they are "working on geofencing" but never specific about what geofencing issue they are trying to fix. And yes you are correct that they then always paint a false picture of "everything's fine", while having officials or other "users" keep asking "have you done this, have you reset, have you reinstalled app, have you got latest version, your wording is not correct, oh I am fine here is it your configuration ...", until the suffering user gets played down, if not starting wondering if it's his/her own fault (actually not!).

And then at the end of the day, GEOFENCING NEVER GETS FIXED STILL.

Alex

StephenB · ‎2025-10-15

@GeneralMeow wrote:

not sure i'm following. Did Arlo state somewhere geofencing is officially broken? All I can see from other users and from my own encounters where Arlo says that everything is great and must be me and/or my phone.

FWIW, it's clear from several posts here on various issues over the years that tier-1 support doesn't always have the right answers.

No matter what tier-1 support might say, it remains broken and Arlo knows it. @BrookeN said as much in her earlier post.

My own experience is that Arrive and Leave don't always trigger ("Arrive" behaving much worse for me). Last night "Leave" triggered, but "Arrive" did not, so this is still an on-going problem. Since I use an iPhone, the problem is not limited to Android.

The design flaw has been evident from the beginning. Not working correctly, but from Arlo's perspective it might be working "as designed".

I have reported this and offered logs, etc - but tier-3 never got back to me. I assumed that meant they already had enough logs.

@GeneralMeow wrote:

Today I got the recurring Arlo App killing the battery due to geofencing enabled.

FWIW I am not seeing that problem on my iPhone 12 mini.

jguerdat · ‎2025-10-15

@StephenB wrote:

@GeneralMeow wrote:

Today I got the recurring Arlo App killing the battery due to geofencing enabled.

FWIW I am not seeing that problem on my iPhone 12 mini.

Not sure GF is the issue unless it appears to be iOS-specific. On Android, it's somehow related to Feed, whether viewing a video or not. Force closing the app and reopening it fixes the battery drain until the next time. I use a CPU monitor to quickly be able to tell when to do that.

BrookeN · ‎2025-10-15

We are aware of the battery drain behavior as well. Which is being investigated also.

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