React Native Background Location Pro

Production-grade background location tracking for React Native that survives app kills, reboots, and offline periods, with no third-party tracking SDKs.

Android and iOS are both shipping. Buy one platform or get both in the Best Value Edition — see Get access. You can also run the free evaluation package in your own app first.

From the author of react-native-pdf-jsi — the JSI-powered PDF viewer and document toolkit for React Native:

Same architecture, same approach to native code.

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The problem

If you have shipped background location on mobile, you have probably hit these:

• The OS kills your app and tracking silently stops, so nobody notices until the data has gaps.
• Points are lost while offline, in tunnels, basements, or on weak networks.
• Uploads get duplicated on retries, so your backend fills up with repeated points.
• Battery drains because every GPS fix is stored and sent, even when the phone isn't moving.
• Tracking falls asleep mid-session. Motion-driven SDKs decide a slow hiker or a phone in a bag is "stationary" and stop recording, leaving gaps in a workout or a delivery route.
• Apps get rejected by Apple and Google review over background-location disclosures, purpose strings, and declarations.

Most tracking SDKs are expensive, closed, or break on newer OS versions. This module solves these problems natively, and you own the code.

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Platform support

	Android	iOS
Status	Shipping	Shipping
Language	Kotlin	Swift + Objective-C++ bridge
Architecture	New Architecture only — TurboModule + JSI, no legacy bridge	New Architecture only — codegenConfig.ios.modulesProvider
Native layer	Kotlin foreground service + FusedLocationProvider	Swift CLLocationManager + CLBackgroundActivitySession (iOS 17+)
Bridge	JSI TurboModule	TurboModule via Objective-C++ (RCTLocationTracker)
Offline queue	Room	System sqlite3
Motion gate (adaptive_low_power)	SensorManager significant motion + accelerometer; Activity Recognition (opt-in)	CMMotionActivityManager + CMPedometer
Self-healing	START_STICKY service + AlarmManager watchdog + boot / update receivers	Significant-change relaunch + BGAppRefreshTask + heartbeat watchdog

Built and tested on React Native 0.88 with the New Architecture enabled. There is no Paper / legacy-bridge path on either platform — the module is codegen-driven on both sides and no NativeModules shim is involved. Both platforms share the same core JS API; iOS adds requestLocationPermission and authorization status fields (When-In-Use / Always, precise location).

Unlike Android, iOS has no foreground service. Background collection depends on the location background mode and the Always authorization; this is a platform constraint, not an implementation shortcut, and it is documented in the iOS build's own README.

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Pick your tracking profile

One line of JS, applied live with no restart: LocationTracker.setTrackingProfile('continuous_fitness').

Profile	Behavior	Use it for
continuous_fitness	Never sleeps on its own. Bound strictly to a 5 m distance filter until your code calls stopTracking(). iOS runs with CLActivityType.fitness and automatic pausing hard-disabled.	Hiking, running and cycling apps, and any session the user starts and stops explicitly
adaptive_low_power (default)	Native motion sensors park the GPS chip while the device is confidently stationary and wake it on movement. Built on OS sensor APIs only, with no third-party SDK.	Delivery, field-service and fleet apps that track all day
balanced	Always subscribed, 20 m displacement gate.	Everything else

The motion gate fails open. If a sensor is missing, the user denies Motion & Fitness, or a vendor ROM blocks the trigger, the engine falls back to always-on GPS. It never pauses silently. Parking GPS requires two independent signals for two minutes: the motion sensors report still, and the location stream has recorded no movement. A slow hiker keeps producing movement, so the gate cannot park them.

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Key capabilities

• Keeps tracking with the app closed. It runs as a native service, independent of the JS layer — a Kotlin foreground service on Android, CLLocationManager with background mode on iOS.
• Self-healing. Tracking restarts on its own after a crash, a phone reboot, or an app update. On iOS this needs Always location permission, and iOS never relaunches an app the user force-quit from the app switcher until it is opened again.
• Offline-first. Every point is saved on the device first, so nothing is lost without network.
• No duplicate uploads. Batched sync stays safe across retries and flaky connections.
• Battery-friendly smart filtering. Only meaningful movement is recorded, and under adaptive_low_power the GPS chip is switched off while the device is stationary.
• Bulletproof native sync. Retries, backoff and network changes are handled in Kotlin and Swift with no JS involved. See Native sync guarantees.
• Store approval blueprints. Copy-paste manifest, Info.plist and privacy-manifest templates, plus disclosure text and reviewer notes. See Store approval blueprint.
• Live map dashboard. Includes a backend with a real-time map to watch devices move.
• Modern React Native. Built on the New Architecture (JSI / TurboModule) with a typed API.

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Tested scenarios

Android:

Scenario	Result
Airplane mode for several minutes while moving	Passed: all points delivered after reconnecting
App process killed by the system	Passed: tracking resumes automatically
Phone rebooted without opening the app	Passed: tracking resumes automatically
App updated to a new version	Passed: tracking resumes automatically
Phone idle for a long period	Passed: no junk points, tracking stays alive
Flaky or captive-portal network	Passed: data held safely until a real connection
Repeated uploads of the same data	Passed: zero duplicates on the server

iOS: offline buffering and duplicate-free uploads behave the same way. Recovery after a reboot or a system kill relies on Always permission (significant-change relaunch), and a user force-quit stops tracking until the app is reopened — an iOS rule that applies to every app.

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Demo

Short clips from the reference implementation. Both platforms use the same core JS API and the same ingestion server, so the dashboard output is identical.

Android — Kotlin foreground service Watch the Android demo (MP4)

iOS — Swift CLLocationManager Watch the iOS demo (MP4)

What the demo shows: tracking started in the foreground, then the app is backgrounded and the process is killed by the system. Points keep landing on the live map, and the queue drains on reconnect.

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Native sync guarantees

Uploads run entirely in the native layer, detached from JavaScript state, so they keep working with the React instance torn down.

• Offline-first. Every accepted fix is written to SQLite (Room on Android) before anything else happens.
• Idempotent batches. Each batch keeps its Idempotency-Key until the server acknowledges it, so retries never create duplicates.
• Classified retries. Timeouts, 408, 425, 429 and 5xx back off exponentially (5 s, 10 s, 20 s and so on up to a configurable cap) with jitter, so a fleet that reconnects together does not hit your server in lockstep.
• Retry-After respected. A 429 or 503 with Retry-After waits exactly as long as your server asks.
• Auth errors never drop data. 401 and 403 keep every point and retry at the cap until the configuration is fixed.
• Dead-letter queue. A batch your server keeps rejecting (for example 400 or 422) can be set aside after maxAttempts, so one bad payload never blocks the rest of the queue. The rows are kept for inspection.
• Survives process death. Retry state is persisted, so a killed app resumes the same backoff schedule instead of restarting it.
• Network-aware. Native connectivity monitors (ConnectivityManager with validated networks, NWPathMonitor) hold uploads while offline or behind a captive portal, then flush the moment a real connection returns.
• Observable. getStatus() exposes retryAttempt, nextRetryAt, lastSyncError and the dead-letter count.

LocationTracker.setSyncPolicy(/* batchSize */ 50, /* maxBackoffMs */ 120_000, /* maxAttempts */ 5);

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Store approval blueprint included

Background location is among the most-rejected permissions on both stores. Each edition ships a review guide for its platform:

	Android Edition	iOS Edition
Guide	docs/review/ANDROID_REVIEW_BLUEPRINT.md	docs/review/IOS_REVIEW_BLUEPRINT.md
Templates	Production AndroidManifest.xml, every permission annotated	Info.plist purpose strings, PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy with location declared
Covers	Prominent-disclosure text, Play Console location and foreground-service declarations, Data safety answers, a shot list for the review video	Feature-specific purpose strings, the progressive Always flow, background-mode hygiene, App Privacy label
Plus	Common rejection reasons with the fix for each, and a reviewer-notes template	Common rejection reasons with the fix for each, and a review-notes template

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How it compares

Each table below covers one category, so you can compare on what matters to your team. Competitor details reflect their public documentation as of Q4 2026; check before relying on them.

Reliability

	Background Location Pro	Transistorsoft react-native-background-geolocation	expo-location + expo-task-manager
Native pipeline independent of JS	Yes	Yes	No (background work runs a JS task)
Restart after crash, reboot and app update	Yes (Android); iOS with Always	Yes	No built-in restart
Never-sleep session mode	continuous_fitness profile	Configurable (disableStopDetection)	Not applicable (no stop detection)
Default when motion detection is unavailable	Fails open, GPS stays live	Vendor-defined	Not applicable

Battery strategy

	Background Location Pro	Transistorsoft	expo-location
Stationary detection	OS sensors: significant motion, accelerometer, CoreMotion, optional Activity Recognition	Motion-activity state machine	None built in
Extra permission needed by default	None on Android; Motion & Fitness on iOS	Motion permission	Not applicable
Battery profiles	3, switchable live	Configurable presets	Accuracy setting only

Data guarantees

	Background Location Pro	Transistorsoft	expo-location
Offline on-device queue	Yes (SQLite / Room)	Yes	Build it yourself
Native HTTP sync	Yes	Yes	Build it yourself
Idempotent batch uploads	Yes, built in	Server-side de-duplication is up to you	Build it yourself
Retry-After and dead-letter queue	Yes	Not documented	Build it yourself

Store compliance

	Background Location Pro	Transistorsoft	expo-location
Review guide with templates	Yes, per platform	General setup docs	Permission docs
Disclosure and reviewer-notes copy	Yes	No	No

Ownership and cost

	Background Location Pro	Transistorsoft	expo-location
Native source code	Full source, yours to modify	Compiled native libraries	Open source
Pricing	One-time, from $39	Per-app commercial license	Free
Third-party tracking SDKs	None	Is the SDK	None
Free trial	Full engine in your own app, debug builds, no time limit	Per vendor terms	Not applicable (free)

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What's included

Every edition includes:

• The React Native JS API (typed TurboModule spec) and a ready-to-use live dashboard screen
• Three tracking profiles (continuous_fitness, adaptive_low_power, balanced) with the native motion gate
• The store approval blueprint for your platform
• A backend ingestion server with a real-time live map, and fault injection for testing retries
• A setup and run guide
• Lifetime updates to the repositories you bought

Plus, per edition:

Edition	Native code	Private repository access
Android Edition	Complete Android tracking module (Kotlin, New Architecture)	Android repository
iOS Edition	Complete iOS tracking module (Swift + Objective-C++ TurboModule)	iOS repository
Best Value Edition	Both modules	Both repositories

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What's new in v2

• Tracking profiles, switchable live: continuous_fitness never sleeps, and adaptive_low_power parks GPS while stationary.
• Native motion gate on OS sensor APIs only: significant motion, accelerometer and optional Activity Recognition on Android; CoreMotion and the pedometer on iOS.
• Sync hardening: classified retries, Retry-After, jitter, an auth-safe policy, a dead-letter queue, and retry state that survives process death.
• Store approval blueprints for Play and App Store review.
• Safer database upgrades: schema changes now migrate in place instead of risking buffered points.
• Default changed: new installs use adaptive_low_power. Call setTrackingProfile('balanced') to keep the v1 behavior.

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Try it free before you buy

Don't take the demo videos on faith. A free evaluation build of the complete native engine is published on npm, so you can run it inside your own app, on your own routes and devices, before you spend anything.

🔗 Vercel quick link: https://vercel.com/oauth/device?user_code=TPMR-LLKD

How the package works (developer view)

• JS calls the same typed API on both platforms, so your React Native code stays consistent.
• Native layers handle background capture, offline queueing, retry/backoff sync, and process/reboot recovery.
• Your backend receives batched points, while getStatus() and event emitters expose operational state to your UI.

npm i react-native-background-location-pro-eval
cd ios && pod install

import LocationTracker from 'react-native-background-location-pro-eval';

LocationTracker.startTracking('https://your-server.example.com');

const status = LocationTracker.getStatus(); // synchronous, over JSI

What the eval package actually is

It is not a mock, a stub, or a cut-down demo screen. It is the production engine compiled and shipped as binaries — bgtrackkit.aar on Android, BgTrackKit.xcframework on iOS — with only the thin TurboModule bridge left as readable source. Your app links the real thing.

	What the eval build runs
Same native pipeline	CLLocationManager / FusedLocationProvider capture, displacement and teleport filtering, SQLite (Room on Android) buffering, idempotent batch sync, motion gate, watchdog
Same JS API	The identical typed TurboModule spec: startTracking, stopTracking, getStatus, syncNow, setTrackingProfile, setSyncPolicy, setDemoMode, requestLocationPermission, plus the onLocationUpdate / onSyncStatus event emitters
Same profiles	continuous_fitness, adaptive_low_power (default) and balanced, all switchable live
Zero app wiring	No AppDelegate edits and no module registration. Android autolinks through react-native.config.js; iOS registers itself from +load and boots on UIApplicationDidFinishLaunching, including headless relaunches
Debug builds only	Runs the full engine in debug builds, including crash, reboot and airplane-mode recovery. No time limit, no watermark
Requirements	New Architecture enabled (TurboModule codegen), Android minSdkVersion 24, iOS 15.1+

What stops when you ship

Production and store builds are gated, deliberately and visibly:

• getStatus().buildTier reports 'debug' in development and 'release' in a production build.
• On Android the engine reads its own FLAG_DEBUGGABLE; if the flag is absent, startTracking() returns without starting, the service and the AlarmManager watchdog stay dead, and the status message carries a stable [eval_release_blocked] code pointing at the sponsor page.
• On iOS the framework selects a release profile at load time, so a Release/Archive build never revives tracking, including through significant-change relaunch.
• Nothing silently "works but doesn't upload". Tracking is off, and the reason is reported.

So the eval build is free for as long as you are evaluating. A license replaces the binaries with full source you own and modify, plus the setup guide, the store approval blueprint, the ingestion server and the live map.

What the eval package does not include

The tarball ships JS types, the bridge sources and the two binaries — nothing more:

• No Kotlin/Swift engine source, no backend server, no dashboard, no store-review templates.
• iOS Info.plist keys are yours to add: UIBackgroundModes (including location), BGTaskSchedulerPermittedIdentifiers, and the location and motion usage strings. The package README lists them.
• No Expo config plugin: add the Info.plist keys yourself in your dev build.

Governed by a commercial evaluation license: run it free in development builds, but no redistribution, no decompiling or reverse engineering, and no removing or circumventing the gate.

Already convinced? Skip to Get access for the full source.

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🚀 Get access

Pay once, no subscription. Pick an edition, then the payment option that matches your location.

Edition	What you get	USD (GitHub Sponsors)	INR (UPI)
Android Edition	Android module + JS API + server	$39	₹3,000
iOS Edition	iOS module + JS API + server	$59	₹5,000
Best Value Edition ⭐	Android + iOS, both repositories	$89 (save $9)	₹7,000 (save ₹1,000)

🌎 Option A: International developers (outside India), via GitHub Sponsors

Pay securely through GitHub Sponsors with any credit card, debit card, or PayPal.

👉 Sponsor on GitHub (one-time)

Important: choose the One-time tab and select the tier for your edition: $39 (Android), $59 (iOS), or $89 (Best Value). Do not pick a monthly sponsorship. This is a single payment, not a subscription.

How access works

1. Open the link above, switch to One-time, and complete the sponsorship for your edition.
2. I personally confirm that your sponsorship and payment have come through.
3. I then add your GitHub account as a collaborator to the repository (or both repositories for Best Value) that matches your tier, usually within 24 hours.
4. Accept the invite from your email or from github.com/notifications.

No need to send your username, because GitHub shows me which account sponsored and which tier. If you sponsored from a different account than the one you want access on, email punithm300@gmail.com.

🇮🇳 Option B: Indian developers (UPI / GPay)

Pay directly via UPI: ₹3,000 (Android), ₹5,000 (iOS), or ₹7,000 (Best Value).

1. Scan the QR code below with any UPI app (GPay, PhonePe, Paytm).
2. Enter the amount for your edition and make a one-time payment.
3. Email a screenshot of the successful payment, the edition you bought, and your GitHub username to punithm300@gmail.com.
4. You'll be added as a collaborator to the matching private repository (or both for Best Value) after the payment is verified.

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FAQ

Is this a subscription? No. Every edition is a one-time payment with lifetime access to its repository and updates. On GitHub Sponsors, make sure you pick the one-time tier ($39, $59, or $89), not a monthly one.

Which edition should I buy? Buy the Android or iOS Edition if your app ships on one platform. If you ship on both, the Best Value Edition costs less than buying the two separately.

Can I try it before paying? Yes. Install react-native-background-location-pro-eval and the full native engine runs in your development builds with no time limit. Production and store builds report buildTier: 'release' and stay off until you license the source. See Try it free before you buy.

Can I use it in commercial apps? Yes. You can use it in personal and commercial projects.

Can I share or resell the code? No. Redistributing, reselling, or publishing the source code is not allowed.

Does it support iOS? Yes. iOS is shipping: buy the iOS Edition on its own, or the Best Value Edition for Android and iOS together.

I paid but haven't got access yet. Email punithm300@gmail.com with your GitHub username, the edition you bought, and a Sponsors receipt or UPI screenshot.

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License

Commercial Source License Agreement

Copyright (c) 2026 Punith Manthri. All rights reserved.

By purchasing, downloading, or accessing the source code of React Native Background Location Pro (the "Software"), you (the "Licensee") agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this Commercial Source License Agreement.

1. Grant of License

Subject to a valid one-time payment, the Licensor (Punith Manthri) grants the Licensee a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, non-transferable license to:

• Use, modify, and integrate the Software source code into personal projects.
• Use, modify, and integrate the Software source code into commercial/production applications owned by the Licensee or built for a single corporate client.

2. Restrictions & Prohibitions

The Licensee is strictly forbidden from engaging in the following actions:

• No Redistribution: You cannot redistribute, publish, upload to public repositories (such as public GitHub repos), or make the underlying source code accessible to third parties.
• No Reselling: You cannot resell, sub-license, rent, lease, or commercially exploit the Software source code as a standalone asset, template, module, or starter kit.
• No Sublicensing: A single purchase covers one individual developer or organization. You cannot purchase one copy and distribute the source code across an entire external network of independent developers.

3. Intellectual Property

The Software and all native source blueprints (including Kotlin and Swift modules, JSI bindings, and Express backend telemetry configurations) are and remain the exclusive intellectual property of the Licensor.

4. Termination

Any breach of this License Agreement automatically terminates your rights under this license. Upon termination, you must immediately cease using the Software and securely delete all copies of the source code in your possession.

5. Limitation of Liability

The Software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied. In no event shall the Licensor be liable for any claim, damages, or other liability arising from, out of, or in connection with the Software.