Clearly they don’t care to fix this issue. I’ve been in the same boat since Nov (2 Pixel 8 Pros). After intense fiddling over the last few days I have narrowed down to identifying that it is definitely the ST App. I don’t have to go to all the cache clearing and any other place than the ST app settings. Unchecking the toggle in “Get your location from this phone” then recheck, then have to go re-enable 8 routines.
This seems to be the case any time either phone is restarted. Very annoying… I’ve been looking at my Google Home app and it knows each time I’m home or away, my next step is getting Home to trigger a routine I guess.
I’ve been using ST for so long I really don’t want to reverse course and find a better solution but this is the kind of stuff that starts that train of thought every so often.
I’m currently using Google Home app (public preview, not sure that matters) to switch Nest cameras on and off based on presence of our two older Pixel phones. So I agree that it’s reliable.
I’ve also been using Alexa presence sensing to trigger SmartThings Scenes for several months. It’s been very reliable also. Unique to Alexa is the ability to create multiple Alexa Routines with different boundaries. I use this to differentiate between “Away but nearby” and “Gone traveling”
As long as you remember to toggle ‘Get your location’ off and on whenever the phone restarts - like after a system update - I’ve found presence to be much more reliable in recent months and with Android 14 the lag before a trigger has reduced and there’s been no need to change any app settings.
Some routines do then need to be visited but it’s possible to limit the number directly affected - for instance a routine triggered by a leave or arrive condition can change the location’s mode plus run another routine with any other desired actions.
The location’s mode can then be used in conditions for other routines (the app knows when to use a mode change to trigger an action) and these routines aren’t affected by toggling the presence setting.
When I had to switch from Life360 to another presence detection method, I abstracted the location tracking method by using virtual presence sensors in my Routines. I then have two Routines for each person that sets the virtual presence for an individual. This allows me to change out the underlying location tracking without having to mess with all my Routines that trigger off of presence detection. It also gives me a way to visibly see a person’s presence which is not something available in the ST app.
I do the same for my “Away but nearby” Alexa trigger.
For the “gone traveling” boundary I have Alexa run a Scene (it’s still called a scene in Alexa no matter what annoying name it’s called in ST). Main thing the Scene does is set a mode. But I may rethink that given the excellent virtual presence sensors from @TAustin
I’m having this problem about every 2 weeks with my Pixel 8 Pro but my wife’s Samsung S21FE works perfectly fine. Whenever it happens I have to disable “get location from this phone” and reenable it, then I have to go edit all the automations based on our presence and add myself back into them. It’s super annoying but it’s the only way I have found to fix it. I made sure it has full location access and it’s never set to be revoked. ST is the only app that I have this problem with and again only with my phone and not my wife’s phone. Super frustrating.
There’s pretty much zero chance this will ever work right given how many years the problem has existed.
For what it’s worth:
I’ve had Nest Outdoor cams on my house since 2018. I used the Nest app until a few months ago and am now using the Google Home app. The cameras switch on and off based on my phone presence and have worked perfectly across two or three different Pixel phones and both apps.
Probably around a year ago I started using Alexa routines triggered by phone location. I’ve got two different boundaries, something you can do with Alexa routines. Works 100% of the time.
On the same phone the SmartThings app was … streaky. It would work for a while then flake out. So I gave up on it completely and use Alexa.
I suggest that the problem isn’t with Android, the Pixel phones, or Google Location Services.
After being reliable for quite some time on Android 14, presence has now stopped working, all the usual disable/enable etc remedies don’t help, this didn’t coincide with any ST app or phone updates, my.smartthings.com Manage Location shows ‘Geolocation is temporarily unavailable’, the Alexa option isn’t available in all regions.
I’m using a Virtual Presence Sensor from the Virtual Devices V2 driver bundle from @TAustin
In my case I switch the presence detector on and off using Alexa Routines. But it might be possible to do it using the Google Home app via the Script Editor.
At least in my case both Google and Alexa detect presence with no issues, only SmartThings has been flaky.
For what it’s worth here is the Google Home script I use to switch my Nest Cams on when we leave.
Google sets the home.state.homePresence variable based on the Presence Sensing settings in the Google Home app. In my case I have both my phone and my wife’s included.
@HalD - do you know if there is a way to pick certain members of the household and change a virtual presence? I haven’t seen a way within the script editor–only in the Google Home app (for each person) and it sends a notification everytime and you can’t turn that part off.
Not that I’ve seen. There only seems to be the single value for presence in the script editor.
Seems you can pick who is included by setting which members’ location is tracked. But I’m not sure what else would be affected by turning one person’s location tracking off.
It was fairly straightforward to add a virtual switch from the ST app labs, linking ST to Google Home, adding Home automations to set the switch according to presence changes (ST routines - scenes - also appear in Home), and changing ST routine triggers to use the virtual switch.
Although this works it’s with a very long latency at the moment - making it not really useable either - but suggests the issue is maybe with the phone - perhaps in how it’s updating background apps.
I upgraded my phone, replaced 5 or 6 year old Pixel 4a(5g) with shiny new Pixel 9 Pro.
Took several tries to get Google recognizing home and away on the new phone. I use that for switching Nest Cams on when we’re gone. I think this is solved.
Now I’m having issues with Alexa not consistently detecting location changes. That is my trigger for flipping the SmartThings virtual contact. This is not yet solved.
Did you use some kind of transfer utility to migrate from your old phone to your new one? When I switched to a new Samsung phone and used SmartSwitch, my Alexa location tracking stopped working. Another user advised me to uninstall/reinstall the Alexa app and that fixed it.
Yes. Don’t know what is called, the transfer started up automatically as part of setting up the new phone. It might be a Pixel thing.
This article came up in my feed. Not an exact match to my symptoms but it collects all the settings that can cause Android to throttle an app.
If those changes don’t help I’ll try uninstalling and reinstalling both Home and Alexa. Home and Alexa both failed to notice that I had left this morning on morning dog walk.
Delayed notifications seem to affect many apps and perhaps that’s the reason there’s such a long delay before Home detects in/out of presence - if it’s not a cloud function then the app needs to be made aware of a location change when not running. ST presence stopped working completely after being OK for ages.
Waking apps to respond to events would seem to be a very basic OS feature.
No harm in trying the adaptive battery setting but adaptive connectivity doesn’t sound like something that is related. When something’s random it’s common to believe a fix has worked only to find it hasn’t sometime later.
