Background Refresh (iOS)
Downcast can periodically refresh your feeds while running in the background. When background fetch is enabled, iOS will frequently[1] wake Downcast while in the background. When this happens, it has 30 seconds to refresh as many of your feeds that are pending refresh. Whether feeds are pending refresh is determined by your Automatic Feed Refreshing setting.
During background refreshing, Downcast can display local notifications about new episodes, download new episodes, and update sync data. Given the extremely limited amount of time that iOS affords apps to perform background fetching, it's possible that multiple fetch sessions may be required to refresh all feeds.
Background App Refresh must be enabled for Downcast in the Settings app (Settings > General > Background App Refresh).
Note: Refreshing of feeds will soon be moved server-side. This is under development now. This will improve performance, battery life, allow for push notifications for new episodes, and make many other features possible.
1. iOS is in complete control of the frequency of Background App Refresh. Under normal circumstances, this will happen several times per hour. However, Apple does not publish the heuristics that control this. There are times where Background App Refresh happens infrequently. If you feel this is happening to you, our best suggestion is to try opening Downcast several times throughout the day for a day or two. This seems to have a positive affect on the frequency.
