Help & frequently asked questions.

1. Location permission: On iOS, access may have been changed back to “While Using.” In system Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Geofency, check that “Always” and “Precise Location” are enabled. On Mac, location access must be allowed.
2. Recording paused: Check whether Incognito is active or tracking for the affected place has been paused or disabled.
3. Limited positioning: Keep Wi-Fi turned on, even without a network connection, and stay connected to the mobile network where possible on devices with cellular service. Time tracking does not require an internet connection.

• Location: On iPhone and iPad, Location Services must be on, with “Always” and “Precise Location” enabled for Geofency. On Mac, allow location access; there is no “Always” setting.
• Connections: Keep Wi-Fi turned on, even without a connection to a network. Nearby networks improve location accuracy. On devices with cellular service, a connection to the mobile network also helps; mobile data can be turned off.
• No internet needed: Time tracking works offline. A data connection is needed for online features such as maps, place details, iCloud sync, and webhooks.

Notifications are set up for each place on each device. Open the place's fine-tuning settings and turn on When Entering or When Leaving under Notifications.

Allow notifications for Geofency in system Settings → Notifications → Geofency, and check that a Focus isn't silencing them. Between 10 PM and 7 AM, notifications arrive without sound.

Geofency only notifies you about arrivals and departures that this device detects automatically. Manual clock-ins and clock-outs and visits synced from another device don't trigger a notification, and none are sent while Incognito is on or the place is paused. A notification appears when the system reports the event, which can be later than the actual arrival or departure.

The “Time to Leave?” reminder is set separately with Reminder on Time Quota. It notifies you once you have spent the set time at the place that day, taking breaks into account, and is cancelled when you leave.

A manual place has no detection zone and is never recorded automatically. Its time comes only from your own clock-ins and clock-outs, for example for a home office at your home address or for work without a fixed location.

To add one, open the Manual category, tap + and enter a name. Geofency uses your current location as its position; you can change it with Edit Coordinates. To switch an existing place, long-press it, or right-click on Mac, and choose Edit → Convert to → Manual. Its recorded visits are kept, and automatic tracking stops.

Clock in and out with Enter and Leave in the place's menu, by swiping the place, or with widgets, controls, Live Activities, Siri and Shortcuts. A visit stays open until you clock out.

Manual places can't be paused and don't count towards the 20 detection zones. Clocking in works without location access and while Incognito is on. Presence Limit and Absence Limit don't apply; Rounding, Time Adjustments and Breaks do. Give the place the Home Office role to count its time as work time in Balance.

Yes. Incognito pauses automatic recording on this device, for a set time or indefinitely. Your places and recorded visits remain unchanged.

In Geofency's settings, choose a duration under Incognito: from 30 minutes to 4 hours, Until Tonight, Overnight, a Custom Date up to two weeks ahead, or Indefinitely. Recording resumes automatically at the chosen time, and a notification lets you know. With Indefinitely, Geofency reminds you every evening for up to two weeks that Incognito is still on. To end it early, choose Off.

While Incognito is on, Geofency ignores entering and leaving detection zones, iBeacons and Frequent Places, so no visits are recorded and no notifications or webhooks are sent. Clocking in and out manually still works, including with widgets, Live Activities, Siri and Shortcuts. HomeKit scenes still run, because HomeKit detects your arrival and departure itself.

Incognito applies only to this device; places tracked on another device are still recorded there. If you are at a place when you turn it on, its visit stays open and your departure may only be recorded after Incognito ends, so check the end time afterwards. To stop recording a single place instead, pause that place.

iBeacon detection needs a compatible Bluetooth beacon that is transmitting, and a device that supports beacon monitoring. A normal Bluetooth accessory is not automatically an iBeacon.

Check the beacon's power or battery and use its manufacturer's app to verify that it is transmitting in iBeacon mode. Keep Bluetooth enabled on your device and test close to the beacon; walls, range and interference can affect reception.

Compare the beacon's UUID with Geofency's iBeacon settings. If you entered Major or Minor, they must also match. A blank Major or Minor matches any value for that field; a manufacturer's default UUID may differ from your beacon's actual configuration.

Check Requirements and allow location access; on iPhone and iPad use Always and Precise Location. Make sure Incognito is off and monitoring for the beacon place is not paused or disabled. If iBeacon monitoring is unavailable on your device, use a supported device rather than expecting a synced place to enable it.

Test a real transition out of and back into signal range. Detection is not an exact stopwatch, and changing a map pin or detection radius does not increase a Bluetooth beacon's radio range.

Do not reset the beacon or change its identifiers without noting the existing configuration. That can also affect other apps or automations using the same beacon.

• Back up: In Backup Settings, use Manual Backup or choose a folder for Weekly Backup. Automatic backups depend on background execution; check the last successful backup date rather than assuming one was made.
• Restore: Restore from Backup overwrites all current data and cannot be undone. Export a backup of your current data first, and only restore a file you intend to replace it with.

With iCloud sync, only one device at a time tracks a place automatically, so arrivals and departures are not recorded twice. A new place is tracked by the device you add it on. The visits it records appear on all your devices.

On your other devices, the place stays in full colour and shows a device badge: it is tracked on another device. A greyed-out place with a pause badge is paused on all devices; pausing a place stops automatic tracking everywhere.

To track a place on this device instead, choose Track Here in the place's menu or swipe actions and confirm with Take Over. The other device then stops tracking it. Make sure this device meets the Requirements; on Mac, keep Geofency running and the Mac awake.

You can clock in and out manually at any place on any device, and manual places are never tied to one device. Notifications, webhooks and calendar export are set per device, so set them up on the device that tracks the place. The Apple Watch never tracks places itself. If you turn off iCloud sync, places tracked on another device are paused here; resume the ones you want this device to track.

• Local only: Erase All Data in Backup Settings deletes local Geofency data; synchronized data in iCloud remains.
• iCloud only: Erase iCloud Data in iCloud Settings deletes Geofency's cloud data and turns sync off on all devices, but keeps the data already on those devices.
• Both copies: Erase iCloud data first, then erase local data on each device. Separately remove exported backups and files you no longer want. Calendar events and data sent to webhook services need to be managed separately. Uninstalling the app does not erase iCloud data.

Open them with the gear button next to a place, or long-press the place, or right-click on Mac, and choose Place Settings → Settings. Besides the radius, notifications and role, they control how visits at this place are recorded and counted.

Presence Limit ignores short stays: if you leave before the set time, no visit is recorded, for example when you only pass by. Absence Limit ignores short absences: if you return within the set time, the visit continues as if you had not left. Both apply to new entering and leaving events, not to visits already recorded.

Rounding rounds entering and leaving times separately to a chosen interval, with the Rounding Mode Nearest, Down or Up. Time Adjustments shift each event by up to ±15 minutes. Rounding changes the displayed times, statistics and exports, Time Adjustments only statistics; the recorded times stay unchanged.

Breaks deduct a set duration from a day's time at the place once you have stayed there for a minimum time. Reset to Defaults restores these settings without changing your recorded visits.

Geofency imports places from GPX, KML, KMZ and GeoJSON files and from contact cards (vCard), for example from Google Earth, another app or an earlier Geofency export. Visits contained in the file are imported with them.

In the sidebar, open the menu of a category or tag and choose Import, or drag files onto it. You can also open a file with Geofency from Files, Mail or AirDrop; on Mac, choose File → Import.

Imported places are added as paused and assigned to the tag you imported into, or to a new tag named after the file. Resume the places you want to track; at most 20 detection zones can be active at once. Places you import into the Manual category become manual places instead and are active right away.

Importing the same file again adds its places a second time. An import only adds places; to restore a complete copy of your Geofency data, use Restore from Backup in Backup Settings instead.

A role marks a place as Home, Work, Home Office or School. Long-press the place in your places list, or right-click on Mac, and choose Role. You can also set it in the place's fine-tuning settings. Home and School can each belong to only one place; Work and Home Office can be assigned to several places.

Balance shows how your time is spread across these roles this week, month or year. Open it from the menu with Diary and Activity; on Mac, press Shift-Command-B.

Only places with a role are counted. Work and Home Office together count as work time, and overlapping visits at several places with the same role count only once. An ongoing visit counts up to now. Balance uses the recorded arrival and departure times without rounding or breaks, so totals can differ from a place's statistics or an export.

Commutes between Home and Work or School are detected automatically when an arrival follows a departure within four hours. Roles sync with your places via iCloud, and Siri understands them, for example when you ask how much time you spent at work.

Tags group places, for example by project, client or trip. A place can have several tags, and deleting a tag keeps its places.

To tag a place, long-press it, or right-click on Mac, choose Organize → Tags and tap the tags you want. To tag several places at once, choose Select in the ⋯ menu, select the places and tap the tag button. Add New Tag… creates a tag with a name, color and symbol.

Your tags appear in the sidebar with the number of their places; select one to see only those places. Its menu offers Show on Map, Show on Gantt, Rename, Edit Tag, a color, Import, Export and Delete Tag.

Tags sync with your places via iCloud. Search and Spotlight find places by tag name, and in Siri and Shortcuts you can list visits by tag.

Merging combines duplicate places into one. All visits of the other places move to the place you keep, and the other places are then deleted.

In your places list, choose Select in the ⋯ menu and select the places. Then long-press the place you want to keep, or right-click it on Mac, and choose Merge 2 Places; the number matches your selection. You can also drag a place onto another place in the list or on the map; the place you drop it on is kept.

On the map, tap a group of overlapping pins. If they lie within about 30 meters of each other, the list offers Merge Places. Tap the place you want to keep, which is then marked Keep, deselect any places you want to leave out and tap Merge into … at the bottom.

Geofency asks for confirmation before merging. Visits that overlap in time are combined into one. Settings, tags, roles and webhooks of the deleted places are not transferred. Merging cannot be undone, so make a backup first if you are unsure.

• Photos: Geofency needs library access, and photos must match a visit by time or location. Limited photo access can exclude items.
• Workouts and sleep: Health access is needed on a supported device. Workout type, minimum duration and distance filters can hide entries. Sleep is shown under the day you woke up.

Ask Siri, for example: “Where was I today with Geofency”, “Am I clocked in with Geofency”, “How long was I at Work with Geofency” or “Clock in or out at Work with Geofency”. Instead of a role such as Home, Work, School or Home Office, you can also name a place.

Siri learns new, renamed and deleted places automatically. If Siri doesn't recognize a place, use the name shown in Geofency or its role. If you don't name a place, Geofency uses the place you are clocked in at or visited most recently, or asks which one you mean. Siri listens in the language set for Siri, which can differ from Geofency's language.

In the Shortcuts app, Geofency's actions let you clock in or out, check whether you are clocked in, ask for time spent or time since a visit, list visits and open a place. Visits can be listed by place, tag or role for today, this week, month or year, and found by place, time or notes. Use these actions in your own shortcuts and automations.

When you clock in or out in the app, Siri learns your routine and can suggest clocking in or out at the right place and time. With Apple Intelligence, Siri also understands “this place” or “this visit” while one is open in Geofency.

Add Geofency's widget to the Home Screen or Lock Screen, or on Mac to the desktop or Notification Center. Edit the widget to follow a specific place or a role; a role widget always shows the place that currently has that role. Tap its button to clock in or out.

On iPhone and iPad, you can add Geofency's control to Control Center, the Lock Screen or the Action button and choose a place or role. It shows whether you are clocked in, and a tap clocks you in or out.

While you are clocked in at a place, a Live Activity shows the time there on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, with a button to clock out. In Geofency's settings under Live Activities, choose how many appear at once and the Mode: Automatic shows every place you are clocked in at, Manual only the places where you turned on Live Activities in the place's fine-tuning settings. Live Activities must also be allowed for Geofency in system Settings.

Clocking in or out from a widget, control or Live Activity counts as a manual visit. Widgets update when Geofency records a change; if one shows outdated information, open Geofency once. Live Activities and controls are not available on Mac.

1. Long-press the place in your places list (or right-click on Mac) to open its context menu.
2. Choose Export → "Export to Calendar."
3. Pick the calendar you want and tap Export. The first time, iOS asks for calendar permission – Geofency needs Full Access here, otherwise it can't write events.

Calendar export is configured for each place on each device. Missing or duplicate events do not necessarily mean that visits are missing from Geofency.

Check that the visit exists in Geofency. In the place's Export → Export to Calendar settings, select the intended writable iCloud, CalDAV or Exchange calendar. Allow Full Access in the system's calendar privacy settings; write-only access is not enough.

In your calendar app, make sure that calendar is visible and its account is syncing. If the calendar was deleted or its account changed, check the selected calendar again. Initial export includes up to 525 visits from the last three months, not your entire history; new visits are then updated automatically.

For duplicates, check whether the same place is exported from several devices, or whether you also imported an exported file. Use one exporting device per place and target calendar where possible; Geofency's iCloud sync does not synchronize calendar-export settings.

Compare the calendar, title and times of duplicate events before removing anything. Calendar events created by another device or an imported file may need separate cleanup.

Remove from Calendar is not a harmless refresh: it stops export and deletes the events Geofency created for that place. Back up any calendar data you want to keep before using it, and do not delete a whole calendar to fix a single place.

No. A tip is an optional, one-time way to support Geofency's development. It is not a subscription and doesn't unlock any features; Geofency works exactly the same with or without one.

To leave a tip, choose Support the project with a tip in Geofency's settings or in About Geofency; on Mac, it's also in the Help menu. The App Store handles the purchase through your Apple Account.

Because a tip unlocks nothing, there is nothing to restore after reinstalling or on a new device, and it isn't shared through Family Sharing. For a receipt or a refund request, use your purchase history in the App Store or Apple's Report a Problem page; Geofency itself can't view or refund purchases.

HomeKit can run scenes from the Home app when you enter or leave a place with a detection zone.

Open the place's fine-tuning settings and choose HomeKit under Automation, or long-press the place, or right-click on Mac, and choose Place Settings → HomeKit. Allow HomeKit access when asked.

Select a home, turn on Run on Entering or Run on Leaving and choose one or more scenes. Repeat limits the automation to certain weekdays, Schedule to the daytime, the night or a time range. Test Scenes Now runs the scenes right away. Create new scenes in the Home app.

Geofency hands the place to HomeKit as a location automation, listed in the Home app with the place's name and “(Geofency)”. HomeKit monitors it and runs the scenes itself, even while Geofency isn't running. This needs a HomePod or Apple TV set up as a Home Hub and Location Services access for HomeKit; the HomeKit screen shows whether the automation is active.

Because HomeKit detects your arrival and departure itself, scenes can run at slightly different times than Geofency records them, and also while Incognito is on or the place is paused. Moving the pin, changing the radius or renaming the place updates the automation; deleting the place or converting it to another type removes it. Make changes in Geofency rather than in the Home app. HomeKit settings stay on the device where you set them up.

HomeKit, not Geofency, detects your arrival and departure and runs the scenes, so a visit recorded in Geofency doesn't mean the scenes ran. Open Place Settings → HomeKit for the place: the line under Run on Entering and Run on Leaving shows whether HomeKit is monitoring the place. An orange warning symbol on the HomeKit row of Place Settings means an automation should run but doesn't.

Right after a change, “Activating in HomeKit” appears for a few seconds while HomeKit sets up the automation. If a “Not active” notice mentions the Home Hub, set up a HomePod or Apple TV as a Home Hub in the Home app, keep it switched on and connected, and update its software. If it mentions Location Services, open Settings and allow access. If HomeKit Access Off appears, allow HomeKit access for Geofency. If HomeKit couldn't set up the automation, the reason appears below, for example missing permission to edit the home or iCloud Keychain being off.

If the automation is turned off in the Home app, HomeKit couldn't set it up, or the line reads “Active — but without …”, tap Try Again. Geofency switches the automation back on, sets it up again or adds the missing scenes. Check under Scenes that the scenes you want are still selected, and that Repeat and Schedule allow the current day and time.

Tap Test Scenes Now to run the selected scenes right away. If something goes wrong, Last Test lists the affected scenes and the accessories that didn't respond; check them in the Home app.

A successful test only shows that the scenes and accessories work; it doesn't check Repeat, Schedule or your location. Because HomeKit detects arrivals and departures itself, scenes can run at slightly different times than Geofency records them, and also while Incognito is on or the place is paused. HomeKit settings stay on the device where you set them up.

Don't edit or delete the automations marked “(Geofency)” in the Home app; Geofency manages them, overwrites changes and sets up deleted automations again the next time you open the app. One exception: if you reinstalled Geofency without restoring a backup, Geofency sets up new automations and the old ones stay in the Home app. Delete them there, or the scenes run twice. To stop an automation, turn off Run on Entering or Run on Leaving in Geofency. Scenes can control locks, garage doors or heating, so only test them when it's safe to do so.

• Homematic/CCU: Connect through middleware such as ioBroker with its Homematic adapters. This is not direct CCU pairing built into Geofency; the setup depends on your central unit and middleware.
• Ready-made receivers: There are Home Assistant's Geofency integration, the ioBroker Geofency adapter, the IP-Symcon Geofency module and FHEM's GEOFANCY module.
• Setup: Set up the receiver first, then enter its URL for Entry and Exit in the place's webhook settings. Follow the integration's documentation: Home Assistant and IP-Symcon use the default POST format; ioBroker uses JSON.
• Away from home: Your device must be able to reach the receiver, for example through a VPN or a securely configured HTTPS endpoint. Do not expose your CCU or middleware unprotected to the internet.

A recorded visit and a delivered webhook are separate things. First check whether Geofency recorded the arrival or departure; if not, check Requirements and whether tracking is paused.

Open the place's Webhook → URL Settings. For Entry and Exit, check the URL and enable Send Webhook. Review Wi-Fi only and any Motion Activity filter: a real event can be skipped when these conditions are not met.

Use Enter and Leave under Test Connection and inspect the response. Check the HTTP Method expected by the receiver and the credentials under Account. A successful HTTP 2xx response confirms that the receiver accepted the request, not that its automation ran.

Check the device's internet connection and whether the receiver is reachable, including away from home. A local network address may need a VPN. Webhook settings are device-specific; configure them on the device that records the visit.

Test Connection sends isTest and creates no visit. Tests bypass Wi-Fi-only and motion restrictions, so a successful test does not prove that a real event passes those filters. Retry on Error retries HTTP 408 and 5xx responses while background time remains; it does not guarantee delivery after a network failure.

Keep certificate validation enabled and fix invalid server certificates. Do not expose your receiver unprotected to the internet. Remove credentials, private URLs and location data before sharing a response or screenshot with support.