Location & Geofencing

Pulsate uses CoreLocation geofencing to trigger location-based campaigns — for example, sending an offer when a customer walks into a store's virtual perimeter. Geofences are defined in the Pulsate CMS; the SDK registers them with iOS and reports enter/exit events.

Requirements

For geofencing to work, the user must grant:

• Precise Location, and
• Allow Always location permission.

Your app must declare NSLocationWhenInUseUsageDescription and NSLocationAlwaysAndWhenInUseUsageDescription in its Info.plist (see Installing the iOS Pulsate SDK).

Starting location

The location permission prompt is shown when you call startLocation() — not at session start. Call it at the point in your flow where you want to ask (ideally right after a priming screen; the SDK requests Always authorization):

pulsateManager.startLocation()

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Initialize the SDK in didFinishLaunchingWithOptions

iOS wakes terminated apps for geofence events via CoreLocation. Pulsate can only handle those wake-ups if the SDK is initialized in application(_:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:) with the launchOptions dictionary passed in. See Running the Pulsate SDK.

Opting users in / out of location updates

Use setLocationUpdatesEnabled(_:) on PULPulsateManager to opt a user in or out of Pulsate location updates. By default, all users are opted in.

import PULPulsate

guard let manager = PULPulsateFactory.getDefaultInstance() else { return }

manager.setLocationUpdatesEnabled(true)   // Opt in
manager.setLocationUpdatesEnabled(false)  // Opt out

Read the current preference with isLocationEnabled():

if manager.isLocationEnabled() {
    // Geofencing is active for this user
}

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Important

Changes are debounced — the SDK waits up to ~60 seconds before syncing a new preference to the backend.

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SDK preference vs. system permission

This toggle is separate from the operating-system location permission. The user must also grant location access to your app (via your Info.plist usage descriptions and the system prompt) for geofencing to function.

Reading and clearing stored locations (Swift only)

For debugging or auditing, the SDK exposes the locally stored location history:

let locations: [PULLocation] = manager.getAllLocations()

try manager.resetStoredLocations()  // clears the local location cache

These two methods are Swift-only (not exposed to Objective-C).

Battery behavior

Since SDK 4.4.0, location was reworked to reduce SDK-driven location updates by more than 90% in typical use: updates are restricted when no geofence is nearby, and geofence-list refreshes wait for meaningful movement (~1 km) between refreshes. Most remaining location activity comes from the iOS Geofencing API itself.