How to troubleshoot iOS background app fetch not working?

Your problem is that you are returning from performFetchWithCompletionHandler before you call the completion handler, since the network fetch operation is occurring the in the background and you call the completion handler in your delegate method. Since iOS thinks you aren’t playing by the rules it will deny your ability to use background fetch.

To fix the problem you need to call beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler and then end that task after you have called the completion handler.

Something like:

UIBackgroundTaskIdentifier backgroundTask

-(void)application:(UIApplication *)application performFetchWithCompletionHandler:(void (^)(UIBackgroundFetchResult))completionHandler
{
    fetchCompletionHandler = completionHandler;

    fetchStart = [NSDate date];

    self.backgroundTask = [application beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler:^{
        [application endBackgroundTask:self.backgroundUpdateTask];
        self.backgroundTask = UIBackgroundTaskInvalid;
    }];

    [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setObject:fetchStart forKey:kLastCheckedContentDate];

    [FeedParser parseFeedAtUrl:url withDelegate:self];
}

-(void)onParserFinished
{
    DDLogVerbose(@"AppDelegate/onParserFinished");

    UIBackgroundFetchResult result = UIBackgroundFetchResultNoData;

    NSDate *fetchEnd = [NSDate date];
    NSTimeInterval timeElapsed = [fetchEnd timeIntervalSinceDate:fetchStart];
    DDLogVerbose(@"Background Fetch Duration: %f seconds", timeElapsed);
    if ([self.mostRecentContentDate compare:item.date] < 0) {
        DDLogVerbose(@"got new content: %@", item.date);
        self.mostRecentContentDate = item.date;
        [self scheduleNotificationWithItem:item];
        result = UIBackgroundFetchResultNewData;
    }
    else {
        DDLogVerbose(@"no new content.");
        UILocalNotification* localNotification = [[UILocalNotification alloc] init];
        localNotification.alertBody = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Checked for new posts in %f seconds", timeElapsed];
        [[UIApplication sharedApplication] scheduleLocalNotification:localNotification];
    }
    fetchCompletionHandler(result);
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] application endBackgroundTask:self.backgroundUpdateTask];
    self.backgroundTask = UIBackgroundTaskInvalid;
}

My test app using this approach has been executing a fetch every 15 minutes initially, but it becomes less frequent over time. Without the background task it exhibited the same issue you are seeing.

I found that setting the background fetch interval to something other than UIApplicationBackgroundFetchIntervalMinimum also helps. My test app is running with a background fetch interval of 3600 (one hour) and has been reliably triggering for several days now; even after a phone restart and not running the app again. The actual trigger interval is 2-3 hours however.

My sample app is here