The Live Activities feature offers real-time information right on your iPhone Lock Screen or Dynamic Island at a glance. So, whenever you’re waiting for your food delivery or tracking your favorite team’s game, you can check updates without constantly unlocking your iPhone.
This feature allows you to stay connected with what’s happening around you without any extra effort. In this article, I will explain what Live Activities is and how you can enable it on your iPhone.
What is Live Activities?
Live Activities offers an innovative way for apps to show real-time updates at a glance directly on your iPhone Lock Screen, either in the Dynamic Island or StandBy mode. Unlike traditional push notifications, which only offer a finite amount of information, Live Activities constantly refreshes to keep you updated without requiring you to unlock your device and open apps.
Not only can you view the updates, but you may also interact with them, like the Lock Screen widgets. Live Activities is triggered automatically when you perform specific actions in apps and can be helpful in multiple scenarios.
For example, it can help you check live scores from sports apps, track your driver’s location and ETA in ride-sharing and food delivery apps, and see live stats and other data from workout or health apps. You can even check real-time election results at a glance via Apple News Live Activities.
Plus, many apps even offer a way to perform actions like starting a timer, controlling music playback, and more using Live Activities. We will discuss which apps support later in the post.
How to turn on or off Live Activities on iPhone
This feature is enabled for all compatible apps by default on iPhones that support iOS 16.1 or later. However, if you’ve turned it off previously or want to disable it, you can do so using the Live Activities toggle in the Settings app.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Tap Face ID & Passcode and enter your passcode to continue.
- Then, toggle on Live Activities under Allow Access When Locked.
Besides turning on Live Activities from Face ID & Passcode settings, you must ensure that you’ve enabled notifications for apps that support this feature. Moreover, you must allow the app to show notifications on the Lock Screen.
How to turn on Live Activities for individual apps
If you only want to use Live Activities with certain apps on your iPhone, you can toggle the feature on and off individually on a per-app basis. Here’s how:
- Open the Settings app.
- Scroll down and select Apps.
- Choose an app from the list and toggle on Live Activities.
If you want Live Activities from a certain app to be shown more frequently on your iPhone Lock Screen than others, you can toggle on More Frequent Updates from the same menu. This allows apps to have priority access to fresh information.
Apps that support Live Activities
Native iOS apps offer Live Activities by default. However, numerous third-party apps use this feature to offer users real-time updates and information on the iPhone Lock Screen. Here’s a list of some popular apps that support:
- Food Ordering: From the moment of departure until the order arrives at its destination, you will get continuous updates on its status. E.g. Uber Eats, Grubhub, Swiggy, DoorDash, Instacart, Zomato.
- Fitness & Outdoor Activities: Quickly see workout progress and health metrics from SmartGym, Slopes, Steps, Landscape, and Gentler Streaks.
- Productivity & Multitasking: Plan your day and stay focused on your task/routine with Subjects, Forest, Structured, Sticky Timers, and TickTick.
- Sports: Enjoy scorecards from the MLB App, NBA App, FotMob, Runcaster, Race Control, and theScore.
- Customization: Customized Live Activities from your favorite apps using LockLauncher, ActivityBuilder, Social Stats, and OneWidget.
- Weather: Stay updated about rains and snow with Lumy, Carrot Weather, RainViewer, Widgy, and Weather Live.
- Travelling & Taxi/Ridesharing: Get navigations and ride updates from Flighty, United, Citymapper, Uber, and Lyft.
- Other useful apps: Apollo, Park Mobile, Cruton, Plantry Meal Planner, Dark Noise, Shazam, and ChatGPT.
Apart from this list, there are several other apps on the App Store that support Live Activities. If you didn’t find the app you were looking for in our list, you can refer to the list of apps on the r/iPhone Subreddit.
I have enabled this feature for almost every supported app on my iPhone, as it reduces the number of notifications I receive for every update. Also, I can stay on top of important events just by glancing at the Lock Screen. Now, let’s see how to use it.
How to use Live Activities on your iPhone
As Live Activities is enabled on your iPhone, you don’t need to do anything specific to make them show up on your Lock Screen or Dynamic Island.
Supported apps trigger Live Activities automatically when you perform particular tasks. These include ordering something from a food delivery app, calling a taxi, tracking a flight, checking live scores for sporting events, and more. After that, lock your iPhone so that the app keeps running in the background. Now, you will see an interactive banner on your Lock Screen.
However, you must tap Allow underneath all Live Activities that show up on your Lock Screen for the first time after you install an app. If you skip this step or accidentally tap on Don’t Allow, all Live Activities for the app in question will be turned off, and you’ll need to turn them on again.
How to use Live Activities with the TV app on iPhone
Besides other pre-installed and third-party apps on your iPhone, the TV app also supports this feature. While the idea may seem redundant for a video streaming app, Apple has implemented a feature that lets you view live scores from live sporting events telecasted on Apple TV via Live Activities.
If you have an Apple TV subscription and love watching live sports on the TV app, you can enable this feature for such events as explained in these steps:
- Launch the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Scroll down and tap on TV.
- Tap Live Activities.
- Turn on Allow Live Activities and More Frequent Updates.
Once you enable this feature for the TV app, you just need to tap the Follow button for upcoming events to get live scores on the day of the event. If you don’t see a Follow button next to a sporting event, it’s probably because it doesn’t support Live Activities or isn’t available in your region.
Signing off…
Live Activities is a quality-of-life addition to iOS that you should start using right away. Not only does it improve your Lock Screen’s visual appeal, but it also gives you an intuitive way to access and interact with information on your iPhone. That way, you can stay up-to-date on all the latest updates from your apps without needing to unlock your device.
FAQs
Apps with Live Activities need to update in the background to fetch new data constantly, so they consume more battery than your other apps. However, the battery consumption is still miniscule and won’t drain the battery.
Yes. You can also use Live Activities on your Apple Watch if it supports watchOS 11. With the latest software update, Apple lets you mirror the Live Activities on your iPhone to a compatible Apple Watch.
There are several reasons why Live Activities may not be working on your iPhone, from misconfigured notifications or app settings to incompatible apps. Refer to our Live Activities troubleshooting guide to learn how to fix it.
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