Another annoyed user here. SmartThings presence has been a trainwreck for several months (my guess is since iOS 11), mainly on my wife’s phone. Always “Present”. We haven’t gone to 11.1 yet, but it sounds like that doesn’t do much. Guess we will try that tonight.
Been on SmartThings for nearly 2 years now with my v2 hub, and I’ve gone from hoping it would be a definitive Smart/Security system to calling it “DumbThings” more often than not, and accepting it as more of a hobby than anything LOL 
I went away for 2 days over the weekend with business so my presence was logged as Away for the duration (had to force Away presence by opening ST app).
Weirdly whilst away my wifes presence started accurately recording her movements and the routines started running as they should (Goodbye, I’m back and light control etc). When I returned my presence has also started to be recognised accurately. Might be too early to judge but it looks like the system has kicked its own a$$ and is now working.
Somebody mentioned on here earlier they went away for a week camping and things started to work upon their return. It might help some users on here if they remove one of their phones for a couple of days and either re-add or enable and see if it helps?
I’m still on iOS 10.3 and just got ST to control my Yale Lock…
Presence only works for me if the app was open very recently and usually triggers when I next open the app rather than when I actually got in to the geo fence.
I have set up IFTTT to lock and unlock the door via geo fencing and it works perfectly so I am stuck wondering why IFTTT can tell ST to trigger my lock under the same conditions ST cannot?
Seems that’s not an iOS problem…
I find even this is now failing at times for me. not sure why but I have presence issues on both ST and WebCORE
Its frustrating. Most of my house is run based on presence. and in the dark no lights on arrival means I’m blind getting to the house.
After two months of unreliable presence sensing using SmartThings, I switched to Life360 (as a SmartApp) about 3 works ago and presence has worked flawlessly.
I know this workaround has been mentioned numerous times on this thread but I wanted to recommend again to all struggling with presence on the SmartThings app to switch to Life360. It is sad that such a disparity in reliability exists still after almost 2 months, but I never even think about it anymore under the new setup. It’s just like the good old days.
Presence seems to have been working fine for me for the past week or so.
I’m getting notifications from ST properly when I leave or return home.
Hope it starts working for others here.
It is really sad that it seems almost everything else works better than ST…
IFTTT works
Lutron App works
Life360 Works
Yonomi Works
Yet somehow ST still managed to fail pretty much all the time.
Fixed the webcore issues. I think my migration to my new phone caused issues.
It works again. ST still doesn’t!
Any update from ST? I too am experiencing very inconsistent presence sensing on an iPhone X running the latest iOS. My wife iPhone 6s with the latest iOS works perfectly fine. Go figure.
Still not working well for us.
Same here. iPhone X iOS 11.2.1, regularly reporting my presence as away and then back to present ~ 10 min later.
Incidentally there seems to be an issue with the SmartThings app and FaceID login. If I wake the phone, unlock with FaceID and the SmartThings app resumes, FaceID login never seems to work. In fact, for me, FaceID login with SmartThings seldom works period. If FaceID login fails, it forces me to relogin with email and password.
Wonder if there is a connection to the FaceID login failures and the presence issues?
I’m on SmartThings version 2.11 build 1425.
Happy to send logs…
Ian,
I too am using an iPhone X. IOS 11.1.2. SmartThings 2.11.
Presence and face ID seem to be working fine for me.
Given all the issues others are reporting here, guess I’m just one of the lucky ones.
Hope you get it sorted out.
Still not working for me, shows me as away for days at a time… despite me coming home every day
Same issues here too. No change since 11 got released. Just posting because when the thread goes stale I wonder if the dev’s will just think this magically fixed itself. Need to keep the pressure on this, it’s broken and a major issue with my automation. Has everyone here just given up?
I have. Like many ST bugs they just go quiet. I have moved to @ady624 webcore presence sensor. It works a treat. Others are using Life360 with good results too.
I moved both my wife and I to @ady624 webcore presence and it has been accurate since the day I installed it without any issues so far. For me I’m running iPhone 7plus iOS 11.2 betas and ST presence has mainly worked when I open the app, on occasion it reports me leaving at the same time as the webcore presence. My wife however was working and ST and webcore was consistently the same for some time until this week. She is on iPhone 7 with iOS 11.1 and this week ST hasn’t left the house, since she never opens the ST app she hasn’t left according to ST in days. Hope they actually get this one fixed it’s annoying how my August App location geofence works fine but this doesn’t…
Adding @Entityxenon as well
Presence has been an issue for folks since 2013 if you search through the threads, so pressure isn’t going to do much I’m afraid to say.
However as mentioned above, if you are already using webCoRE then you know what power this has over your ST environment. Basically toss out Routines and build Pistons that can be built using much more complex evaluations and qualifications. So on top of that, they also have Presence Sensor for both Android and IOS and people reporting and posting in there who have had prior issues and turmoil with presence in ST are not having the same negative results using it.
I myself am an Android user and have never had an issue with mobile presence in ST, but I wanted to test out the webCoRE version anyway. It’s even more precise for me and more real time (no real delay in timing). On top of that being able to add multiple locations (Places) that you can trigger when leaving from or arriving to within a Piston gives you that much more power and flexibility versus the single Home Location in ST. Let’s say you have a Piston setup so that when you leave Grandma’s house (Place 2), then it turns on your thermostat at home so the temperature is just right when you arrive home.
I’m just saying for those of you that are already broken or have tried the 15 other different fixes or hacks, this might be a great solution to end your sadness.
Thanks for this. Now that I don’t have to install a separate version of webCoRE I’ll take another look. I am using Life360 as a workaround but the wife isn’t a fan of the fact I can watch her every move
This is kinda like buying an Android to fix an iPhone problem though. Seriously, how can presence be such a persistently ignored issue. 99% of my actions in ST are based on presence and SHM statuses. Don’t think I am the odd man out here…
Wife has been 2,000KM’s away for over a week and it still shows that she’s home in the ST app (Life360 is fine) so it’s not like this fixes itself and updates based on distance from home or duration. Just crazy
You aren’t, but with as many different types of issues around this, I believe there is more than one single source of the issue for a lot of people and I don’t think that it’s going to be fixed anytime soon. I know there are so many different things posted. I also know that for many people having an issue, I believe that anyone leaving the Geofence size as the default ring that is already there and not adjusting it to a wider perimeter, they will never get it to work. That’s not saying everyone, but I did some if my own testing on the Android side and if the perimeter is too small, I can get it to break on my phone. Also, I think a lot of issues where ST is at fault is when people have more than one phone as presence sensors. I also think more people have issues on the IOS side. I also think that permissions play a huge role in why it doesn’t work for some people. There are so many different contributing factors here, I just don’t see it being resolved in the near future I hope I’m wrong, because I believe that with SmartThings this is one if the most top 5 features necessary for successful home automation.
So give the webCoRE a shot. It works somewhat similarly in that you will create a Presence device that shows in Things but functions from the webCoRE Smartapp. And like I said being able to setup multiple locations, that to me is a reason to switch even with my current ST mobile presence working.
I think there is a bug in your app. It has happened twice where on the iPhone X the app fails. I then have to reinstall to have it working.
Not sure why. Any thoughts?