Guides · Phone setup

Keep your safety apps working: battery, location and notification settings

About 5 minutes to read · Last reviewed 4 October 2026

A safety app that has quietly been put to sleep is worse than no app at all, because everyone believes it is working. Modern phones are very aggressive about saving battery: they pause background apps, delay notifications and switch off location for anything they think you aren't using. Usually that is exactly what you want. For a safety app, it isn't.

This guide covers the settings that matter on iPhone and Android, why each one matters, and a two-minute monthly test that tells you whether everything still works. It applies to any family safety or location app, not just ours.

1. Notifications: the setting that matters most

An alert you never see is the most common failure. Check that notifications are allowed for the app, that its emergency category isn't silenced, and that it can show on the lock screen.

• iPhone: Settings → the app → Notifications. Allow notifications, lock-screen display and sounds. If the app offers Critical Alerts, allow them: they let a genuine emergency alert sound even when the phone is on silent or in a Focus mode such as Do Not Disturb or Sleep.
• Focus modes: if you use Sleep or Do Not Disturb every night, add your safety app to the allowed apps, or make sure its critical alerts are on.
• Android: Settings → Apps → the app → Notifications. Android lets apps have several notification categories; make sure the emergency ones are allowed, set to sound, and allowed to override Do Not Disturb if offered.

2. Location: "always", and precise

Location set to "while using the app" means the app only knows where you are when it's open on screen — which, in an emergency, it usually isn't.

• iPhone: Settings → the app → Location → Always, with Precise Location on. iOS will periodically ask whether you still want to allow it; answer "Always" each time.
• Android: Settings → Apps → the app → Permissions → Location → Allow all the time, with "Use precise location" on.

3. Battery restrictions

This is where most "it stopped working" problems come from, and Android phone makers differ a lot.

• Android (all): Settings → Apps → the app → Battery → Unrestricted (sometimes called "Don't optimise").
• Samsung, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, Huawei and others add their own extra battery managers on top: lists of "sleeping apps", "auto-start" permissions, or "background activity" switches. Look in the battery and app settings for anything that limits background running and exclude your safety app. The names vary from phone to phone, so if you can't find it, search your phone model plus "keep app running in background".
• iPhone: Settings → General → Background App Refresh → on, both overall and for the app.

4. Low Power Mode and battery savers

Battery-saver modes reduce background activity across the board. That is a reasonable trade when you're at 10% and need the phone to last, but leaving a battery saver on permanently can make location updates far less frequent. Turn it on when you need it, not as a default.

5. Don't swipe it away

Many people habitually swipe every app closed. On iPhone in particular, force-quitting an app from the app switcher stops its background location updates until you open it again. There is no battery benefit to doing this for apps you want running. Leave the safety app in the background.

6. The other permissions, and why they're asked for

• Motion and fitness / physical activity: lets an app tell walking from driving, and notice a hard impact for crash detection.
• Microphone: only needed for voice features such as listening for a keyword. A well-designed app uses it only when a listening session is started, not continuously.
• SMS (Android): lets an app text emergency contacts directly. iPhones don't allow this, so apps open a ready-written message for you to send instead.

Grant what you'll use and skip what you won't. Our guide to phone permissions for safety apps goes through each one in more detail.

7. After every big update, check again

Major operating-system updates, a new phone, or restoring from a backup can quietly reset permissions. After any of those, run through steps 1 to 3 again. Keep the app itself up to date too; fixes for background running are common in updates.

8. The two-minute monthly test

Once a month — the first of the month is easy to remember — check that it all still works, and tell the family it's a test first:

1. Look at the family map: does each person's location look current?
2. Send a test alert or check-in and confirm someone received it, with sound.
3. Lock the phone, put it away for ten minutes, then ask someone whether your location kept updating.
4. Check the battery is healthy enough to last a full day.

If anything failed, it's almost always one of the settings above. Older phones with worn batteries are another common cause; a replacement battery can make an old phone dependable again.

How Zone Tick fits

Zone Tick is a supplementary safety tool, not an emergency service, and it is built to tell you when these settings are wrong rather than fail silently:

• The setup checklist checks permissions, notifications and battery settings for real, re-checks when you come back from the phone's Settings, and can be reopened any time from Settings.
• Critical Alerts on iPhone let a family SOS sound through silent mode and Focus once you allow them.
• Low-battery notices tell your family when your phone drops to 15%, so a dying phone doesn't look like an emergency.
• On iPhone, Back Tap can start a listening session even though iOS doesn't let apps listen in the background — the setup checklist walks you through it.

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This guide is general information. Zone Tick is a supplementary safety tool, not an emergency service: in an emergency, call your local emergency number.