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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

> Apps must gracefully handle it and continue running.

Would this include… not doing anything? A notice that to use the app that you must grant access?

I hate apps that do that … BUT:

I am thinking of a logistics application that I wrote that requires location access. It effectively serves no purpose without location access.

It’s a small app that we offer to our clients. Not an app for the general public. But it is a situation where I don’t want the app to continue doing anything without location access.

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It depends on the app. For example, I can’t view my balance in my banking app if I don’t sign in to an account, but I can find nearby ATMs or pull up the number for customer service.

The logistics app could offer some features like phone numbers, support hours, or even account management features without location access, so users can still get access to those things even if they can’t enable location (or are in Airplane Mode, for instance).

And then the core part of the app could have a message explaining why location access is essential. Perhaps with a link to a privacy policy or other document to explain how it will be used and handled safely. I love apps that do that and even have a button I can tap to go straight to the proper settings screen to grant access (or in some cases I can tap and the app will request again, so I can say yes this time).

In this case the users of the app are our clients employees. No location access is not an option for them.

Nobody wants to call in their location, nor do our clients want to setup some process for that.

Your case is special, but think about a maps app that requires login and location, when you want to simply measure the walking distance between two points.

I believe there’s a special publishing mode for yours, but not sure how it works irl.

I would imagine they just mean "you can't crash or abruptly exit." Telling the user "please grant location access to use the app" and providing a button to try again is probably fine.

I think it depends on the function that the permission access provides. If permission use is core to the app (like your app is a map with a dot for the user's location that has no other functionality like business searching), then, you're probably allowed to just sit there with an empty map doing nothing until the user consents.

If location access is peripheral to the core function of the app, it's a different story. Like your Yelp and one of many functions of your app is to "search nearby" then you can't just have a screen that does nothing until the user consents.

EDIT: Yes, for OP's use case, you'd just appeal to Apple and prove that the app has no other purpose besides the use case that requires location. I've done this in the past successfully.

Yes, the comment I was replying to specified that they are like the map app with no other functionality:

> I am thinking of a logistics application that I wrote that requires location access. It effectively serves no purpose without location access.

One middle ground between requiring location access and failing to run at all would be to ask the user to provide an address. That way the user would have some control over what info they provide.

Agree. Any app that requires location access should be able to accept a manually introduced location as a fallback when the user doesn't desire to grant location permission.

Which is consistent with what would happen anyways with the above idea of providing fake data when the permission is rejected.

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