Permissions and driving in the background

Step 1

The permissions screen comes up once, after your profile is saved, and explains itself before your phone’s own permission boxes appear.

Step 2

Location, set to always or background, is the one that matters most. It is how your position reaches passengers and how dispatch knows where you are when a hire comes up near you.

On Android you are also asked to let the app display over other apps, so a ride offer can appear over whatever is on your screen. An iPhone has no equivalent setting: there you are asked for always-on location and for notifications, and that is all.

Step 3

Notifications are how a ride offer reaches you at all. An offer wakes the phone with a sound and a vibration; with notifications off there is nothing to wake it.

Step 4

Turning battery optimisation off for the driver app is the fourth ask, and the easiest to skip past. Do not skip it.

Left on, your phone is entitled to shut down the service that publishes your position and listens for offers while the screen is off. The app asks for the exemption precisely so that it cannot.

Step 5

While you are online, or on a journey, the app publishes your position in the background — screen off, phone in your pocket, another app open. It runs as a foreground service, which is why your phone shows a notice while it is working.

Step 6

Going offline, or ending a journey, stops it. The same rule covers a GPS tracker fitted to a standby vehicle: its positions are only taken while the vehicle is online.