The Best Apps Using Apple’s Live Activities
Sometimes it’s great to pick up your phone, see exactly the information you want to see, and put it away right away without unlocking it or risking getting stuck. That’s the idea behind Live Activity , an underused iOS feature that allows apps to display data in real time. updates on the lock screen and on the dynamic island.
If you’ve ever listened to music, set the time, or called an Uber, you’ve seen live action—it’s simply a way to receive passive updates about what’s happening right on your lock screen. Live Activities are different from lock screen widgets , which appear on the slipper half of the screen. They are more like a notification than a widget and usually contain some real-time information.
Live events offer a great way to passively track everything from sports scores to the tides. Here are some of the best apps I could find that use this feature.
Find flight times from your airline or Flighty
When I’m running through an airport, the last thing I want to do is constantly unlock my phone to find information like departure times and gate numbers.
Some airlines, including United in the US, offer Live Activity directly in their apps. However, if your airline doesn’t do this, you’re out of luck: the Flighty app offers Live Activity that collects this kind of information in real time. Better yet, give the app access to your calendar and it will automatically display all the flights in your schedule. This means you don’t even have to open the app to see real-time activity on your lock screen – everything happens automatically. No more walking around and scrolling to find your flight details. The main drawback: it’s not free. A Flightly subscription starts at $48 per year, which is quite expensive, but you get a couple of free flights to try things out before committing.
Get sports scores from Apple TV or Sports Alerts.
Sometimes you’re actively watching the game, and sometimes you’re doing something else while it’s happening. Interactive activities are great for this – you can glance at your phone every now and then to see the score as well as a few other key stats, and then get back to what you’re doing. Apple offers live streaming for some sports in the Apple TV app (I don’t know why you can’t access them from the new Apple Sports app – I hope it comes). Apple TV only offers live streaming of NBA, MLB and MLS matches, as well as several European sports leagues.
However, if you need soccer and hockey scores or just want to keep all your scores in one place, check out Sports Alerts . This free app offers scores from many more leagues than Apple Sports, including women’s leagues, and you can see live action in any game that has scores. The only downside to this and the Apple TV offer is that there’s no option to automatically trigger an activity when the team you’re following plays a game—you’ll have to go into the app and manually trigger the activity.
Get real-time tide updates with tide charts
Whether you live near the ocean or just visit occasionally, it’s important to know what the tide is doing. The Tide Charts app tells you exactly that, giving you a quick way to check the tide without having to open your phone all the way. Unfortunately, Live Activity is not currently offered in the free version of the app. The full version costs $30 per year, which is probably only worth it if you depend on tracking the pace of your work.
Get election results from Apple News
This is an election year. For some people, it’s best to wait until the next day to find out who won (if you’re lucky). If you can’t bring yourself to do this, but also don’t want to endlessly click “refresh” on the results page, consider using Live Activity through Apple News. If there’s an election, including any upcoming primaries, you can turn on real-time updates and see results on your lock screen as they happen. I tried this during the South Carolina primary and it works well.
How to Enable Live Activity on Your iPhone
If you want to start using Live Activities on your iPhone, you’ll need to make sure they’re enabled first. Here’s how to do it (assuming you’re using iOS 16.1 or later):
-
Open the Settings app
-
Scroll down to Face ID and Password.
-
Scroll down until you see the Allow Access When Blocked subsection and make sure the slider next to Interactive Actions is highlighted in green.