iOS Background NFC Tag Reading on iPhone - GoToTags (2024)

• How Background NFC Tag Reading Works
• Background NFC Tag Reading Limitations
• Supported URL Schemes for Background NFC Tag Reading

• Reading NFC tags with an iPhone
• iPhone NFC Apps

For iPhone models that support Background NFC Tag Reading, the user experience of interacting with an NFC tag is designed to be as simple and smooth as possible. When an iPhone detects an NFC tag it performs the following steps, most of which the user does not see:

1. Determines if the NFC chip is NDEF formatted and contains at least one NDEF record
2. Parses the 1st NDEF record and checks if it’s a supported NDEF record type and URL scheme
3. If the 1st NDEF record is supported, the appropriate iPhone app to handle the NDEF record is determined
4. A pop-up notification is displayed showing the user basic information about what the NFC tag contains and what app with handle the action
5. The user must click on the pop-up to perform the action; this is an op-in privacy/security feature
6. The action is performed

There are couple requirements and limitations for iOS Background NFC Tag Reading, but for most Connected Things projects these are not an issue. For Background NFC Tag Reading to work, the following must be true:

• A supported model of iPhone; this is the biggest issue, but as time goes on and consumers upgrade this becomes less of an issue
• The NFC tag must be encoded with a supported NDEF record, most often an NDEF website record to trigger opening the URL in a web browser
• The iPhone app is registered for the specific URL scheme; the Safari app handles NDEF website records which again covers most use cases
• The iPhone app has registered an associated domain entitlement
• The iPhone must have been unlocked once since startup
• A Core NFC session or Apply Pay transaction must not be in progress
• The camera is not in use
• Airplane mode is not enabled