Pokémon Go 381.1 nags for background location as Adventure Sync breaks for many

The latest Pokémon GO update is causing headaches for players worldwide, with version 381.1 introducing an aggressive push for background location permissions while simultaneously breaking one of the game’s most popular features.

Players loading up the game are now greeted with a persistent popup demanding “always on” background location access every single time they launch the app. The request won’t go away unless you cave in and grant Niantic constant tracking privileges. One frustrated player posted on Reddit asking if this harassment strategy was designed to make players “surrender to letting them track our location all the time.”

The popup claims background location is needed to “inform you about interesting things near you and give you credit for your fitness activity, even while the game is closed.” But here’s the kicker: Adventure Sync, the feature that’s supposed to track your walking distance when the app isn’t open, is completely busted for a huge chunk of players right now.

Reports started flooding in from both iOS and Android users after the update rolled out. People are walking their usual routes and racking up zeros across the board. One player mentioned walking 13 kilometers with absolutely no recognition from the game. Another person who works night shifts covering about 12 kilometers has been getting credit for maybe one kilometer if they’re lucky. Google Fit and Apple Health are recording the distances just fine, but Pokémon GO refuses to sync the data.

Many players rely on Adventure Sync to passively progress through research tasks and hatch eggs while going about their day. Now they’re stuck either carrying their phone with the app open constantly or missing out on distance credit entirely. This is especially frustrating during the current XP Celebration research, which requires significant walking distances to complete.

Niantic has officially acknowledged the Adventure Sync malfunction on their support page, listing it as “under investigation” without providing any timeline for a fix.

Meanwhile, some desperate players on Android have resorted to rolling back to version 0.377.1 through APK downloads just to get basic functionality working again.

For now, trainers are stuck between accepting invasive location tracking or dealing with broken distance tracking. We’ll keep an eye out for any further developments and will post an update if there’s something to share.