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How to Add NSLocationAlwaysUsageDescription Key to Info.plist File in Your iOS App

by Kapil GorveDecember 22nd, 2020

Too Long; Didn't Read

React Native has a GeoLocation service which gets included by default into your build. Even if you do not use the GeoLocation API in your codebase, it is still in your app build. This triggers code bots about possible usage of Geolocation. You need to add a custom message about why you need user's location data as well. You can see on the left Libraries in current app in below screenshot. This solved the NSLocationAlwaysUsageDescription issue. I deleted RCTGeolocation.xcodeproj from libraries folder in XCode.

featured image - How to Add NSLocationAlwaysUsageDescription Key to Info.plist File in Your iOS App

We received a message from iOS App Team about adding

NSLocationAlwaysUsageDescription

key in

Info.plist

file. Our last build was rejected for this specific reason.

Being clueless about what went wrong here. I googled up and found some interesting things.

NSLocationAlwaysUsageDescription

key needs to be added to your

Info.plist

file if your app using user's location data.

You need to add a custom message about why you need user's location data as well. Quite surprised by this, we were not using geolocation service or tracking user's location. Our app didn't need this specific functionality. So why do we need to tell the user that we are tracking the user location while we are not?

Turns out React Native has a GeoLocation service which gets included by default into your build. Even if you do not use the GeoLocation API in your codebase, it is still in your app build. This triggers code bots about possible usage of Geolocation.