Guest Manager Check-In 4.0 is now on the App Store. The last update we posted here was version 2, back in 2020 — so this one is a big one. 4.0 is a modern rebuild of the foundation the app runs on, plus a set of door-facing features that make scanning faster and harder to get wrong.
Modern scanning with VisionKit
The camera scanner now runs on Apple’s DataScanner (VisionKit) — the same engine behind the system camera’s live text and code recognition. It locks onto barcodes and QR codes faster and more reliably, especially in the tricky lighting you get at a real door.
Front-facing camera
You can now scan with the device’s front-facing camera, not just the rear one — useful when an iPad is mounted or angled so the back camera isn’t practical.
Catch double-entry across every device
Busy events run several scanners at once, and a ticket that’s already been used shouldn’t get a second entry. 4.0 adds device-side duplicate detection: it recognizes a barcode that’s already been scanned — even when that scan came from another device and hasn’t finished syncing yet — and shows a sticky DUPLICATE warning that can’t be dismissed by accident. Every scan also records its outcome (accepted, duplicate, invalid) to a richer audit trail.
Look up guests by email
In Contact mode, you can now find a guest by typing their email address, not only by scanning a barcode — handy when someone shows up without their ticket.
A more reliable offline sync engine
The app is offline-first: everything keeps working at the door whether or not the venue’s wifi holds up, then syncs when the connection returns. 4.0 reworked that sync engine from top to bottom, closing a class of race conditions that could, in rare cases, leave a few attendees missing after a sync. Partial syncs now roll back cleanly instead of leaving records half-written.
We can see problems sooner
4.0 adds a new observability layer — Apple’s MetricKit plus Sentry for crash and error reporting (replacing the older Bugsnag). In practice that means we catch and fix issues faster, often before you’d think to report them.
A note for the curious
Under the hood, 4.0 is a serious modernization: the scanner moved to VisionKit, the codebase adopted Swift 6’s strict concurrency model (which shook out a number of subtle threading bugs), crash reporting moved to Sentry, and we cleaned up the project structure. The app now targets a current version of iOS.
Upgrading from an older version
The first launch after upgrading from a 3.x version runs a one-time full re-sync, so make sure you’re online when you open 4.0 for the first time. After that, you’re back to normal offline-first operation.
Minor fixes and improvements
- VoiceOver now reads each attendee row as a single, clearer element
- Faster, more accurate ticket search and section ordering in the attendee list
- A batch of sync-timing and Core Data correctness fixes that reduce stalls and missed updates
- Cleaner handling of fresh installs and stored credentials on first run
