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Your van can stay Live with your phone in your pocket

The headline 'Stay Live with your phone in your pocket' beside an iPhone showing the Chimes map of the Isle of Wight and the banner 'Now with Background Location Tracking!'

Until now, Chimes only shared a van’s location while the app was open on the screen. Put the phone in your pocket, or let it lock, and your van stopped moving on the map. Customers down the road never got their chime.

That’s fixed. Since Chimes 2.2.2, your van stays Live when Chimes is in the background or your phone is locked. Go Live at the start of your round, put the phone away, and drive.

What it means for you

  • Customers keep getting chimes. As you drive into someone’s area, their phone chimes, just as it does when Chimes is open on your screen.
  • Your phone is free for everything else. Take card payments, answer calls, use your sat-nav or just lock the phone. Chimes keeps sharing in the background.
  • Parked up and serving? Chimes still updates your position about every 10 minutes, so you stay on the map while you serve.

How to use it

  1. Update Chimes to the latest version from the App Store (2.2.2 or later, on iPhone or iPad).
  2. Go Live as usual: open Location Sharing and tap Share Location.
  3. Put your phone away. Your iPhone shows a blue location indicator at the top of the screen while Chimes is sharing in the background. That’s iOS telling you Chimes is using your location, as it should.

There’s no extra permission to give. The location access you already allowed is enough, as long as you go Live from inside the app.

You’re still in control

  • Stop Sharing stops it, straight away. When your round is over, tap Stop Sharing and Chimes stops sending your location, in the background too.
  • Closing Chimes completely stops sharing. If you swipe Chimes away in the app switcher, your van stops updating. Open Chimes again and it carries on.
  • If Chimes can’t share in the background, the Location Sharing screen tells you, and how to fix it in Settings, rather than leaving you to guess.

A tip for long rounds

iPhone’s Low Power Mode can pause apps’ background location, so on a long round keep the phone charging in the cab if you can.

Not on Chimes yet?

Live van tracking is a free trial for ice cream vans and mobile food businesses. Registering takes a couple of minutes on an iPhone or iPad: open Chimes and go to Settings → Register your business.