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How do I get my app icon to show in the bottom left corner of the lock screen and have it link to the app store? Can I control that using iBeacons? Is it easy to test without having the app in the app store?

josh
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  • http://bgr.com/2014/06/03/ios-8-location-based-app-alerts/ – josh Sep 17 '14 at 18:03
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    I wonder if somebody might actually answer josh's question: how to get one's app on the lock screen? – QED Jan 24 '15 at 23:15
  • We are in 2015 and still we don't have an official answer for this? @josh, did you find a solution for that? – MeV Mar 02 '15 at 17:24
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    As well as I answered here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26082414/make-app-appear-as-ios-8-suggested-app-at-lockscreen/26676020#26676020 – RobCat Mar 04 '15 at 17:50
  • What will happen if both GPS based and beacon based location detection works together. 1. Does beacon based identification overrides GPS based identification 2. What if multiple beacons are placed in an area (say there are 4 different restaurants having beacons) and the user has the app of all the 4 restaurants. Which restaurant will iOS Suggest on the lock screen/ left corner? – Abhishek Bedi Nov 02 '15 at 08:53

5 Answers5

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You must have your app already installed on an iOS device before you can trigger any functionality using iBeacons. There is no way to have the presence of a beacon automatically prompt a user to download your app from the AppStore, no matter what the user interface.

The only exception to this is that if the iOS device already has another app installed that prompts a user to download your app. You could even do this with a pre-installed app that responds to beacons like Passbook. But even in this case, you somehow have to get the third party app developer to put in custom code to link to your AppStore page on iBeacon detection, or somehow get a user to put in a new passbook entry for prompting to install your app.

The bottom line is that all of these exceptions are generally harder than getting people to install your app via other mechanisms.

Sorry.

EDIT: It seems that lots of reports of this are really referring to the new Suggested Apps feature of iOS8. This is an AppStore feature that uses geofences (not beacons) to find apps relevant to your location. The description of this feature in settings says:

Leaving this option turned on will allow iOS to offer suggestions for App Store apps that you do not already have installed. These can be based on what you already have installed or what people near you find interesting.

Again, this is based on geolocation not beacons, and it is unclear whether the suggestions are based on an algorithm (other folks regularly using an app in the vicinity), a database (known locations of major retailers), or paid marketing (e.g. Starbucks pays Apple to suggest their app when near one of their shops.) It could be a combination of all three.

How do I know that this technology is not based on beacons? Because I received an app suggestion for Starbucks (without having the app installed) and then I immediately used a non-iOS-based beacon scanner that verified no beacons were in the vicinity.

davidgyoung
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  • thanks for the answer. I feel like one time I was walking through the airport and the app store icon appeared in the corner and i swiped up and it brought me to the app store to download an app for a store in the airport. What you are saying makes sense and that would make me believe that apple would be in control of something like that – josh Sep 17 '14 at 21:29
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    @davidgyoung I don't think this is true. I just left a store that had an app store icon in the bottom left because I did not have the app installed. I opened it via the icon and was presented with the App Store page for that app. I'm looking for this answer as well. – Alex Muller Sep 17 '14 at 22:47
  • @davidgyoung If the app is already installed on device, on what basis its icon will appear on lock screen? Do we have to implement monitoring of UUID sent from the ibeacon? or purely from the ibeacon we can configure event which shows up the installed app on lock screen? I still cannot understand how the iOS 8 manages to show starbucks icon and redirect to appstore if its not installed. – Javal Nanda Sep 18 '14 at 04:31
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    The icon on the lock screen appears if the app is already installed and it tripps a Geofences or beacon monitoring event registered to that app The AppStore app can do this, too, but I am not aware of any public program to have the AppStore trigger installation of a third party app based on the presence of a beacon. It is certainly possible that Apple has entered into private deals to do this with certain retailers with their AppStore app. Where have you seen this? At what retailers? – davidgyoung Sep 18 '14 at 08:43
  • @davidgyoung I was able to see the icon once with the AirLocate sample, but was not able to justify its consistency. Can you help me understand if icon will only appear once every time app enters within the range from outside region? Does the app needs to stay running in background or its icon will show up even if its not running. – Javal Nanda Sep 18 '14 at 12:59
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    My understanding is that the icon shows up whenever the app receives a didEnterRegion/didExitRegion callback when it is not in the foreground. These events can also launch an app into the background, but this is largely unrelated to the icon. – davidgyoung Sep 18 '14 at 15:18
  • @muller, can you name a retailer where you have been prompted to download the app by the AppStore on iBeacon detection? If you tell us the retailer, others can try to reproduce. – davidgyoung Sep 24 '14 at 14:23
  • @Muller, I would love to see a screenshot of this, both of the icon showing up on the lock screen and of the prompt to install the app. I'd also be interested in knowing the specific retail location where this happens -- I just tried to reproduce at my local Starbucks and could not. – davidgyoung Oct 01 '14 at 17:04
  • @davidgyoung I apologize for taking so long, but I finally found it. I was at Kohls, and had it happen to me. Now, I have had it installed before, so perhaps the UUID of the beacon is still stored on my phone? I'm not sure. Attached are the two screenshots. http://es.tinypic.com/r/156aii9/8 http://es.tinypic.com/r/2jd2o9e/8 – Alex Muller Oct 05 '14 at 21:36
  • I suspect this was the Suggested Apps feature of the AppStore. If you wish to verify this, you can try disabling the feature and see if it stops the suggestion next time you visit. See here: http://www.imore.com/how-enable-and-disable-app-suggestions-ios-8 – davidgyoung Oct 05 '14 at 23:23
  • Yes, I know about this feature. However I think the question is how does one enable this for their app on an uninstalled device. – Alex Muller Oct 06 '14 at 00:11
  • Understood, and unfortunately Apple isn't telling us. Part of the question is "Can I control that using iBeacons?" The answer to this part, unfortunately, is "no". See my answer edit for details. – davidgyoung Oct 06 '14 at 00:33
  • It is very interesting, I emailed Apple about it, and after a few emails back and forth they just stopped responding to me. – Alex Muller Oct 06 '14 at 14:32
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Apps appear in the lower corner of the lock screen on iOS 8 when there are geofencing events. This can include location or beacon events.

The app I'm working on shows up in the corner when I enter a beacon region.

Mike Welsh
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  • How does our app will appear? The UUID that ibeacon sends has something to do with our app? do we need to handle anything from the app level to detect ibeacon advertisement or its purely configuration on ibeacon side to send signals that would show our app? – Javal Nanda Sep 18 '14 at 03:31
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    You need to register the UUID in your app that the beacon is broadcasting. You use a CLLocationManager to register for a CLBeaconRegion with the associated UUID, which will then cause the delegate of CLLocationManager method -locationManager:didEnterRegion: to fire. – Mike Welsh Sep 19 '14 at 00:23
  • @MikeWelsh can't find any information about CLCircularRegion and lock screen icon. For me it appears only when CLBeaconRegion determined if the notifyEntryStateOnDisplay = true. CLCircularRegion doesn't have this property, is that means that enter the CLCircularRegion cannot push that icon to device lock screen? – iiFreeman Nov 28 '14 at 11:42
  • I believe that property only determines if the locationManager:didDetermineState:forRegion: method is called when launched from the icon using the beacon region. I was only using CLCircularRegion and the app icon was appearing for me. – Mike Welsh Dec 01 '14 at 16:16
  • @MikeWelsh: What will happen if both GPS based and beacon based location detection works together. 1. Does beacon based identification overrides GPS based identification 2. What is multiple beacons are placed in an area (say there are 4 different restaurants having beacons) and the user has the app of all the 4 restaurants. Which restaurant will iOS Suggest on the lock screen/ left corner? – Abhishek Bedi Nov 02 '15 at 08:52
  • @AbhishekBedi I'll answer the second question first because it's a bit simpler. The range on these beacons is pretty minimal (it's using BLE) - so you're very unlikely to have all 4 be detected simultaneously unless the 4 restaurants are co-located in the same building/space. I would suspect the last detected app would be the one shown. I can't speak to the overrides - I don't know which is preferred, GPS or Beacon. Sorry I can't be more use there. – Mike Welsh Nov 02 '15 at 13:35
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You need to register the UUID in your app that the beacon is broadcasting. You use a CLLocationManager to register for a CLBeaconRegion with the associated UUID, which will then cause the delegate of CLLocationManager method -locationManager:didEnterRegion: to fire.

2Mike Welsh Pls can you show any code how to "register the UUID in your app that the beacon is broadcasting". Also if you finding beacons with UUID+major+minor - do you need to to register them all? Because I have about 100 ibeacones and all of them have different major, minor.

If iPhone owner don't download my app never, how he will see it in the corner? How Apple will know, that exactly this uuid, major, minor are by this app? Where they take information?

Can you show on you example? Because now I have a lot of questions, but still no answers, just completely different information.

Other can also to read article by estimote about "icon in the left corner": http://blog.estimote.com/post/97824495825/ios-8-pushes-location-context-to-a-new-level-lock

MMM
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  • could you please contact me via email? i need to ask you something quick, my email is written in my profile. Please... Thanks!! – MeV Mar 03 '15 at 11:38
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This use case is depicted by Apple Documentation Region Monitoring via iBeacon and the good example by Estimote as told by @ElmRid

loretoparisi
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The only way to trigger an app using ibeacons is to have the app already installed on the device. If the app is not installed, Apple might be able to send apps suggestions based on Geo-Location (as for Starbucks or Apple Store), but that is something that needs to be requested to Apple and they will eventually approve it (it has nothing do to with the submission of an App).

Henry Pham
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