Verification needed: GPS location not recorded on iOS with Enketo

User Support Data Collection
,
1

Hi,

I need some community power to verify a recent observation that the GPS location cannot be recorded anymore using Safari on mobile iOS devices with Enketo.

In step 2 (see below) is a test form containing a geo-location widget only allowing to record the gps location on mobile devices and a location accuracy note that will be displayed under the geo widget if a location was recorded.

Steps:

  1. make sure Safari (or Chrome) is allowed to access location services / turn on gps
  2. open form and tap the gps button (crosshair)
  3. if the accuracy note appears recoding the location was successful / if no note appears it was not successful
  4. please report your result (successful / not successful) and provide version numbers for iOS in the form
  5. submit form

I will come back soon with results when there is a sufficient number of submissions in the form.

If you mind privacy issues - just delete the recorded location but provide information regarding success and iOS version.

XLS Form for own tests:
XLS_Form_iOS_Location_Bug.xlsx (11.9 KB)

Thanks in advance!

2

@DSimon, have you tried recording simple GPS points with a normal form? I mean a form without complex styling prompts and constraints/expressions in it (just to see how it behaves)?

3

Not yet - due to a lack of access to an apple device. That’s why I tried here.

The form that lead to the discovery of this issue is one that we have used many times before in recent years and it always worked with iOS devices. Now, when using it last week we received reports from all iOS users that GPS locations were not recorded.

I had the opportunity to quickly test it on a friend’s iPhone. We also changed the location permissions for Safari from “ask” to “always”. Apart from the note not being triggered the input fields for lat/long/alt/precision remained empty upon location retrieval on all attempts we made.

I have also tested the from on the beta-test server for Enketo 7.3.1 - same result.

Apple unrolled iOS18 a few weeks ago. I suspect this might be the root cause of the problem because suddenly all Apple mobile devices we used this form with cannot retrieve GPS location.

So I’m pretty sure that one relevance function in the example form is the reason for this behavior.