June 22 and the problem still exists. App has to be active and screen on. Uploaded the wife and kids photos overnight by changing screen lock to Never, but my work phone has a mandatory 30 second screen lock. So I am stuck tapping it every 30 seconds to try to keep the uploads working.
OneDrive now has an overnight upload option that works nicely- start it and it prevents the screen from locking. Nicely implemented.
The fix for this is to enable gps and set it to always on. When a major location change is detected, background upload will start. The problem is, gps has been removed from the latest version of the app for some reason. This isnāt an issue for my phone, I already had gps enabled. But my wife just got a new phone, and I canāt get Nextcloud to request gps permissions so that her background upload will work. Please add in gps permission!!!
I donāt think this will change anything, because the corresponding code for the location updates was removed as well:
This really sucks! I donāt understand the change. GPS seems to be the only way to get background upload working on iOS. Even Dropbox and Google photos use it. Iāll have to test this more, but my background upload seems to still function, but my wife has to open the app. Iāve left gps on for Nextcloud, didnāt realize the code was removed.
I have GPS turned on all times for Nextcloud, but that doesnāt solve the problem. As soon as the phone goes to sleep, upload stop.
So with gps enabled it may still stop if you have the app open just sitting on a table. So if you wanted to upload say 1000 photos then the best option is to turn the screen timeout to never and throw it on the charger. But what it will do is if you take several photos, then you drive a distance from from where you are, itāll wake up for a minute and backup those several photos.
I tried it today after work and took a few photos. I then closed all my apps and drove home after a stop by target. All four of the photos I took backed up.
I have same problem with last version 4.4.2.
Photos and videos only upload if app is open.
Iām new to Nextcloud, however I have the same problem noticed.
However I understood there is a workaround to enable GPS to give the iOS app the possibility to get some background execution time. My app version 4.4.2.0 does not have the option to grant access to the location. Is this something that was dropped in the meanwhile?
This was removed from NextCloud for some reason. I had an older version of the app, so I already had gps enabled, but now itās been removed from the code itself. The app only ever backs up if/when itās opened. Maybe try creating a shortcut that opens the app every time you charge your phone.
Same issue for me too, even worse, I see my iOS devices need me keep the screen on too as otherwise uploading stops as soon as the screen turns off.
Probleme still existā¦
Yo Nextcloud team, this is a pretty big showstopper for over 6 years now, what gives?
It is incredible that the iOS app cannot do background sync of my photos and videos, this make the app basically useless. What a shame for Nextcloud!
As far as I know it is not an issue in the responsibility of Nextcloud but Apple. As far as I understood Apple has restricted background execution tasks and only allows a limited number of apps to be executed. So I recommend to address your complain to Apple 
It is only a partial limitation from Apple which the developers of the Nextcloud app do not want to manage with the help of the Apple support.
In fact Google Photo and Amazon Photo works absolutely fine and both of them can do pictures upload in background wihout any issue, on any iOS device.
Thatās a pity because I would have paid for an app developed by Nextcloud with this feature, but their developers seems not interested to put any effort on this foundamental featureā¦
I have the same issue.
I would love an app, and pay for an app, that would have this feature.
Im building a clooud for my family, and I dont know if they will use it even, if it does not background auto-sync photos. Kind of defeats the point in my use case.
Hope it will be fixed.
Edit:
If you download TestFlight and get the latest beta of the NextCloud app 4.9.2 the issue is fixed.
Same issue here, it persists, makes the app meaningless if it canāt do background sync which i think was the main usecase for it ā¦ to get away from likes of google cloud and apple icloud
Afaik this is a limitation which Apple has set to prevent unnecessary draining of the battery by background job execution, so you should reach-out to Apple and ask them to remove that hurdle from their OS
Google Photos and Dropbox and a meriad of other s work properly why is it only a problem with Nextcloud ?
