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Engineering

iMessage location request now works reliably for everyone

Ryan

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Preface

Preface

Share location requests on iMessage are core to how people use Photon — and they're the most natural way for agents to request a user's location. It should just work, every time, instantly, no questions asked.

But we knew it didn't always. In certain conversation states, the share location request would render without the "Share Location" button — the user saw the prompt, but couldn't act on it. It was most common in two cases:

  • Conversations that weren't saved to contacts

  • Threads with a high message count

We fixed it.

Why this matters

Share location requests are the native, frictionless way for Photon agents to ask users where they are. When the button doesn't render, the agent asks for location and the user simply can't respond. For any agent-driven workflow that depends on location context, this was a blocker.

Rebuilt from the ground up

We completely rearchitected the rendering pipeline for iMessage share location requests. Button visibility is now fully decoupled from contact state and conversation history depth.

The result: 99% render reliability, regardless of how the conversation is configured — whether it's a first-time thread or a years-long chat with thousands of messages.

No SDK changes. No migration. It just works now.

Available to everyone, right now

This isn't gated behind a plan upgrade or a feature flag. Every Photon user — Free, Pro, and Business — gets this improvement today. Generally available, no action required.

Share location requests should never fail silently. Now they don't.


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