iOS 8 Location Permissions and Notifications
Apps can only ask for one level of access, and can only ask once. Developers have to choose how much access to request. Once you’ve asked for “when in use” authorization, for example, you can’t ask again for “always” permissions. You also can’t display a dialog asking the user to choose between “Always,” “When in use,” or “Never.”
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Apple’s solution to this problem is to let developers send users to the Settings app so that they can change the location permissions for your app. This feels like a classic “sweet solution.” It’s not a good experience to boot users out into the Settings app, even if it’s directly to the settings for your app’s location permissions. It breaks the user out of your UI, and there’s no obvious way to get back to your app after they’ve changed settings.
By far the most annoying change is a giant blue banner on the top of the screen when an app is using your location in the background. This banner can’t be dismissed and there isn’t a setting to have it not show. This sounds OK on paper (we want to prevent apps from tracking you without your knowledge), but in practice is insane. I know perfectly well that Google Maps is using my location, if it were not using my location I would be very interested as I will get lost as a result. It’s fine if you want to let me know this, but please give me a way to dismiss it.
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The final sin is that this turd also appears when you’re not actually using another app at the same time as navigating. Simply closing Google Maps is enough to have the blue banner show up for about half a second. Even if you hadn’t navigated anywhere. This flash is enough to infuriate me.
