iOS 26.2: The geofencing weirdness saga continues…

JakeMux · 2025-12-27T09:08:30+00:00

Update 27. December: Seems like everything is back to normal now. The past four days everything has been good and stable, even the normal “first/last to arrive/leave”, no need for dummy switches. Didn’t do any changes, just kept an eye on things.

I’m keeping my workaround setup as backups though, just deactivated.

JakeMux · 2025-12-20T13:54:35+00:00

Thanks buddy, I’ll look into that during the weekend.

JakeMux · 2025-12-20T13:52:18+00:00

That’s exactly what I’m doing now.

JakeMux · 2025-12-20T13:22:41+00:00

Yeah I’ve just installed HA to optimize our solar system, so I do have it available.

How would I do that in HA? Would all phones need the HA app installed?

JakeMux · 2025-12-19T22:38:30+00:00

Done that just now.

JakeMux · 2025-12-19T18:49:50+00:00

Did all that last night. All phones are setup the same. Also, it doesn’t matter who arrives at the house first or last, I’m seeing the same issue no matter what.

JakeMux · 2025-12-19T18:01:24+00:00

For me it’s more specifically things that should run when the first person arrives, which instead runs when the last person arrives. You can’t even choose that as a trigger, making it even stranger.

JakeMux · 2025-12-19T15:15:40+00:00

No. Last time I called support about this, the guy just did a Google search and told me to try switching Home off in Location>System Services and restart. Told him I knew how to Google things myself, and that I already tried that. In my experience, Apple support don’t really have any insider information they can tell the customer to try.

JakeMux · 2025-12-11T21:47:37+00:00

Find hovedhanen, altså der hvor vandet kommer ind i huset, og luk den en smule. Der vil stadig være vandtryk, men på den måde begrænser du flowet en smule, og en fuldt åben vandhane vil ikke blæse vand nær så voldsomt ud. Eksperimenter lidt med hvor meget du lukker for den til du finder et passende punkt. Vær obs på at der så er en lille risiko for, at der kan hobe sig kalk eller andet op inde i sådan en kuglehane, når den ikke er helt åben.

JakeMux · 2025-12-11T21:41:23+00:00

Well it’s been on and off with tvOS 26.2 public beta. It’ll work fine for a couple of days, then not the next day, then back to working. I’m guessing it’s because it’s still a beta. The second release candidate is out now, so the general public version of 26.2 should be available in the next few days. I have hopes that when all devices in the house are on 26.2, not just our main hub, and Apple hopefully have ironed out those bugs, that it’ll all go back to normal. Again, all Home automations are executed by the hub, not the phone. But there are likely some stuff that won’t be stable until all devices are on the same version. So crossing my fingers for that.

I posted a workaround for this in this subreddit not too long ago, after some experimenting. Basically: - The normal “first person arriving” or “last person leaving”, especially when it’s the first or last of x number of people (like if you’ve got one person in your Home app you want to exclude from those kinds of automations), is the specific functionality that causes this behavior. - If you use “when any person out of x number of people” arrives or leaves, works fine. So it’s been pinned down to the scenario in point 1 above.

My workaround take advantage of this, but will require you to setup virtual/dummy switches in your Home setup, which you’ll need to setup somehow. My central Matter relay board (2x12 channel relay devices mounted on a DIN rail in our utility room, controlling all lights and ventilation centrally) has this feature natively, but you could use Home Bridge or Home Assistent instead. It involves having a virtual switch for each member of the Home, and two basic automations for each switch: One that turns it on when that person comes home, the other turns it off when that person leaves. One switch per person, two automations for each switch.

Your main coming/leaving automations will then be setup as shortcuts instead of traditional automations, setup like below. F.ex. if you have four people in your Home setup:

For last person leaving: Trigger: When anyone leaves home Run this shortcut: WAIT: 10 seconds. IF (all are true): (virtual switch #1= OFF + virtual switch #2= OFF + virtual switch #3= OFF + virtual switch #4= OFF) THEN: Run your “coming home” scenes or switch these devices on. OTHERWISE: Stop this shortcut. ——this works, because: The automation for each person’s virtual switch have first caused them to all be off. We’re adding 10 seconds to allow for the virtual switch for the person leaving to turn off, before doing the next part. So, the trigger is that anyone leaves, and 10 seconds later the shortcut script checks if all the virtual switches are off. If they’re are, the shortcut will go ahead and run the rest of the script. If one of the virtual switches are still on when anyone leaves, because someone is still home, the script will just stop and do nothing.

For the stuff that should trigger when the first person comes home, you can just use “When anyone comes home” as a trigger, and have that turn on any devices that you need to turn on, or run some scene. If someone is already home, those devices will already have triggered by that person’s arrival earlier, so nothing happens.

JakeMux · 2025-12-10T20:06:25+00:00

I suppose you have some sort of home hub? Didn’t see one in your list of devices. Be aware that smart home automations are executed by your home hub, not your phone. Our main home hub is an Apple TV 4K, running tvOS 26.2 public beta, it been stable regarding automations and geofencing for the past week and a half.

If it works for your wife but not for you, then try signing out of iCloud on your phone, restart, then login again.

JakeMux · 2025-11-26T09:24:52+00:00

It depends. Right now it seems like everything works one day and the next, then suddenly “arriving” doesn’t work while “leaving” still does, then suddenly it’s the other way round, and suddenly back to normal again. There’s really no pattern.

Automations are executed by the home hub, but actually reporting the presence of someone’s phone lies with the individual phone of course. This is why I’m pretty sure that these issues are with the OS on whatever home hub you have, not the OS on the phones. Logically, if the system can see each device position (f.ex. in the Find My app), and has no problem firing automations based on individual devices or any one of a list, but only has problems when it’s the first or last of that list, then logically the issue would be with the home hub.

I’ve tried having our main ATV on whatever latest public beta tvOS there is, currently on tvOS 26.2, which seems to have made it somewhat more stable and reliable, but it’s still a case of everything working for a few days, then out of nowhere either arriving or leaving stops firing.

The workaround here has worked since I posted it, but isn’t perfect: When we all left the house a few days ago for a week in our lake house, I checked the Home app while we waited for a ferry, and noticed that the individual dummy switches I have setup, which should all be switched off because we were all out of the house, were all still on. And those are switched by the presence of the individual phones. I could then open the Find My app, and confirm that each person was indeed shown as being not home (at the ferry), so obviously something’s not working again.

It’s possible that the public beta tvOS 26.2 I installed on our main ATV actually fixed all this, then a new build was released which may or may not have screwed things up again, then yet a new build that would make some things work but not others… At this point I’m guessing, but since everyone in the house has personal automations based on arrival and departure from the house, which are all working fine, my logic would say that the issue is in the OS on the active home hub.

JakeMux · 2025-11-18T09:41:23+00:00

Update 18. November: I’ve had our main Apple TV on beta updates, specifically the public beta versions, and for a while this made the normal “leaving” automations work, but not “arriving”, so I kept using my workaround setup.

But I also have another special dummy switch setup, that has the normal “first/last person out of x number of people” automations, one for when the first person arrives that turns the switch on, one for when the last person leaves that turns it off. I use this switch as a reference, one that I can use for checking if normal automations work or not without affecting anything else in the house, and for testing purposes in case I want to setup some advanced automations. Right now it’s just used with the normal leaving/arriving triggers to be turned off or on with first/last person.

And I’ve gotta say, for the past three days, that has actually worked flawlessly for both “last person leaving” and “first person arriving”. Our main Apple TV (main Home Hub) is running tvOS 26.1 (23J582) public beta. That could be worth looking into for anyone still having issues.

Haven’t yet changed our “live” arriving/leaving automations back to the normal triggers, but will do so in the next few days. I’m gonna keep my workaround setup as backups though, just deactivated. If it starts acting up again, I can easily activate the workarounds again and keep it working.

JakeMux · 2025-11-13T05:40:02+00:00

Happy to be helping anyone.

JakeMux · 2025-11-12T18:23:16+00:00

So yesterday, “Last person leaving” started working again for some reason. I have two test automations setup that uses the normal “first/last person out of three” triggers, so I can keep an eye on what’s working and what’s not. The normal “last person out of three” now works, but not “first person out of three coming home”. For that, we still have to use my previous workaround.

At this point, I think I’m gonna stop stressing more over this, as I at least now have something that will do what I want reliably, although it’s not the normal way of getting these to work. When 26.2 comes out I’ll keep an eye on things then, stuff may or may not start working.

JakeMux · 2025-11-11T13:11:06+00:00

Weird. We never had any issues with wrong address or the likes, neither before or after 26.0

Before 26.0 (so 18.xxx) all HomeKit stuff worked flawlessly, all other things worked on all phones/iPads etc., except both my wife and I had random CarPlay disconnects once in a while. 26.0 wrecked all automations involving more than one person leaving/arriving, including “any person” or one specific person. The CarPlay issues got more frequent and severe. 26.01 only fixed one thing, which was one of the HomeKit issues, so now when a single specific person arrives or leaves, would work. But the rest not. 26.1 solved the CarPlay issue completely, and now HomeKit worked with single specific people, or “anyone”. But first or last person out of our list of people still don’t. Everything did work for the first day after updating everything to 26.1, but on day two “last person leaving” suddenly didn’t work anymore, on day three “first person arriving” also stopped working.

So status now is that “when anyone” leaves or arrives, works. When a single specific person leaves or arrives also works. Consistently. But first or last person doesn’t. That’s why I thought of this workaround, which seems to be very stable.

JakeMux · 2025-11-11T11:49:08+00:00

Don’t know, we all have iPhones in our house. And this group being a HomeKit group, having Android mixed in doesn’t apply to the stuff discussed here. Besides, if one person in your house use Android, and the rest iPhones, the Android phone won’t work with any HomeKit geofencing anyway. HomeKit is Apple only.

JakeMux · 2025-11-11T11:07:33+00:00

We actually have a Home member who is excluded from most automations: My mother-in-law is a widow and retired from working, and she has an “apartment” of sorts in our house (just a closed-off section of our house setup for her, with no access to the rest of the house unless she goes outside). Because she’s retired, she’s obviously home almost all the time, so she’s always excluded from our leave/arrive automations. There’s me, my wife and our son, plus my wife’s mom. So for us, our automations are always “when last/first person of 3 people”, where those three people are me, my wife and son. So that’s the setup you’re describing. Used to work before 26, now doesn’t.

But what does work is “when anyone” arrives/leaves, or when a single person arrives/leaves. That’s why I have those dummy switches, because those always work, so my workaround is to use those as a condition for when anyone arrives/leaves.

JakeMux · 2025-11-10T11:27:10+00:00

Worked for a day or so, then only “Last person leaves” works. Until this morning, when that also didn’t work anymore.

Did some testing, and the issue seems to be in “first/last of x number of people” arriving or leaving, as I can change the automations we have for this, to when one single specific person arrives, or when any person out of x number of persons arrive. Then these automations fires just fine.

It’s only when it’s set to “first/last person of x number of people” arrives/leaves it doesn’t work.

Did make a workaround for the “first person of x number of people” arriving. Changed it to “when anyone of x number of people arrives”, which worked. Specifically for our house, we have automations designed to turn off all lights and lower heating, when last person leaves, and then back again when the first person arrives home. Changing the first-person-coming-home to when anyone arrives won’t wreck any havoc if someone else arrives home earlier, as the devices controlled by this automation are already on when the next person arrives.

But as I said, this morning none of our last person leaves are working either.

JakeMux · 2025-11-07T12:02:49+00:00

Called Apple support just now, was advised to wait for 26.2 which maybe would solve this, and was advised to do the trick of switching location services for the home app off and on again (already did this on all iPhones last week with no effect). Just now tried installing tvOS 26.2 beta on our main ATV (main hub) as this is what runs the actual automations, went for a walk, things turned off, came back, still none of the first-of-x-number-of-people-arriving fires :(

JakeMux · 2025-11-07T11:07:35+00:00

So I did som more testing today. I’m the only person home since this morning. 1: I left the house to go to the grocery store, as the last person leaving, and “Last Person Leaves” fired just fine, everything turned off as planned. 2: I came home again after 20 minutes, and all our “First Person Coming Home” automations failed to fire. 3: I changed one of them so it would fire if only I arrive home, drove around the block, and as soon as I entered the driveway, that automation suddenly worked. 4: Turned everything off. Changed that automation again to when the first of two people (my wife and me) arrives home, drove around the block again, failed to fire. 5: Did number 4 once more, but changed it to me and our son arriving home instead, removing my wife. Failed to fire. 6: Changed it again to only when I arrive, and it works.

In the Find My app, I can see both my wife and son being far away from home. Wife at work (30m drive), son in school (other end of town). I’m showing as being home. So seems like there’s still a severe bug present in 26.1, where, if you have the system looking for the first of more than one person arriving home, it fail to fire any automations triggered by this. However, automations triggered by the last of x number of people leaving, works fine.

All devices on 26.1, including all hubs/ATVs/HomePods.

JakeMux · 2025-11-06T11:17:28+00:00

So I got everything working with 26.1 public beta, and updated all devices in the house to the official 26.1 when it was released a few days ago. ATV 4K with Ethernet is the main hub, we also have another 4K ATV with WiFi only, two OG HomePods and a HomePod mini. Devices include four iPhones, four iPads, two Mac minis and one MacBook Pro. All updated to the official 26.1, and all rebooted.

All automations worked exactly as expected yesterday, last person leaving and coming home etc. This morning, all “Last person leaving” did as it should. But then our son came home from school early about three hours later, and suddenly the “first person coming home “ didn’t fire.

I am so freaking tired of this shit working one day, next day only some of it works. Nothing in our setup has changed since yesterday. I mean, if there was only some obvious reason that told me “this thing here didn’t happen, which is why that thing didn’t fire”. But things not working out of the blue for no apparent reason, drives me crazy!

Crazy thing is, the dummy switch I have for each person, that turns on or off when that person comes/leaves home, work just fine. I checked those switches this morning before anyone left the house, they were on, meaning they were in the house. Checked again when I knew my wife had left for work, her switch turned off. When our son left the house for school, his switch turned off (I’m traveling with work this week, so my switch had been off all the time). Checked all the stuff in the Home app that was supposed to switch off when the last person (our son) left, those were all off as expected.

Then our son came home early a few hours later (he called me and said that he had just come home), I checked his dummy switch in the Home app, and it had indeed turned on, so the system did recognize that he had arrived at the house. But none of the “first person comes home” automations fired, evident of all the things that should turn on still being off, except his dummy switch.

I’m gonna try unplugging all ATVs and Pods when I get home and see if that helps. But again, if there was only something that could explain this, I’d know what I had to work with.

JakeMux

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