Having some discussion about when we should clear out a token from our servers. Docs say: Don’t retry notification responses with the error code BadDeviceToken, DeviceTokenNotForTopic, Forbidden, ExpiredToken, Unregistered, or PayloadTooLarge. You can retry with a delay, if you get the error code TooManyRequests. The way I see it is that with the exception of PayloadTooLarge, all other errors means you should remove the token from your server. Either because: The token is no longer good The token is good, but this is just not the right: environment (sandbox vs production) topic (the token is from a different bundle id or developer team) target (app vs live activity appex) Do I have it right? Extra context: when using the "JSON Web Token Validator" tool, a colleague reported that a 410 -Expired token (from couple days back) was still valid today. This raises questions about when tokens should actually be deleted and how these error codes should be interpreted. Also is it possible for the docs to get updated for us to explicitly know if a token should get removed and not leave it for interpretation?

Hey! I'm working on enabling remotely started live activities. I'm running into 2 crashes: Upon initializing ActivityAuthorizationInfo Upon calling Activity<...>.activities array Both stack traces look like this: 0 libsystem_kernel.dylib +0xce0 _mach_msg2_trap 1 libsystem_kernel.dylib +0x4398 _mach_msg2_internal 2 libsystem_kernel.dylib +0x42b4 _mach_msg_overwrite 3 libsystem_kernel.dylib +0x40fc _mach_msg 4 libdispatch.dylib +0x1cc04 __dispatch_mach_send_and_wait_for_reply 5 libdispatch.dylib +0x1cfa4 _dispatch_mach_send_with_result_and_wait_for_reply 6 libxpc.dylib +0x107ec _xpc_connection_send_message_with_reply_sync 7 BoardServices +0xaea8 -[BSXPCServiceConnectionMessage _sendWithMode:] 8 BoardServices +0x17938 -[BSXPCServiceConnectionMessage sendSynchronouslyWithError:] 9 BoardServices +0xeef0 ___71+[BSXPCServiceConnectionProxy createImplementationOfProtocol:forClass:]_block_invoke They happen to a limited number of users, but not insignificant. Most are on iOS 18.6.2 and iOS 26.1, but there are others in the mix. I don't have a repro myself. It looks like the main thread gets blocked after we receive no response from these ActivityKit APIs. Both of these are called inside application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:. For ActivityAuthorizationInfo, we need the app to communicate with the server whether the user has live activities enabled; hence, calling this object's init as early as possible in the app. For activities array, I'd like to do some logging whenever the live activity is started or ended (for example, if activities array no longer contains any activities, we can log the activity as dismissed). For this logging to happen, as far as I understand, it has to happen inside didFinishLaunchingWithOptions since this is the only method being called upon the terminated app receiving background runtime when the live activity starts/ends remotely. After some research, one potential reason is ActivityKit APIs are just not ready to return values via xpc connection at app startup, so moving these methods to applicationDidBecomeActive could resolve the problem. That's fine for ActivityAuthorizationInfo init, but for accessing activities, there is no other place in the lifecycle to see if an activity has been dismissed (especially in the scenario where app is terminated, so we get only 30 seconds ish of background runtime). Curious if anyone has run into this or has any insights into ActivityKit API behavior.

For our Live Activity Tokens, when we fire a payload, often apns is returning a response of 410 unregistered. Docs are saying: The device token is inactive for the specified topic. There is no need to send further pushes to the same device token, unless your application retrieves the same device token, refer to Registering your app with APNs Questions: Why does this happen? Does it only happen because the user changed their permission? Or there are other reasons? And when it does happen, what should we do about it? A. Should we keep the token on the server? Because perhaps the user will change their permission and the token becomes valid? That could leave us with lots of invalid tokens and us firing at them unnecessarily. Docs do say: Don’t retry notification responses with the error code BadDeviceToken, DeviceTokenNotForTopic, Forbidden, ExpiredToken, Unregistered, or PayloadTooLarge. B. Or should we remove the token from the server? That then requires app to re-register the token. But the problem with that is: When I went into App's settings from OS settings and toggled push notifications to on, the app was not launched into the background nor killed i.e. it requires explicit app launch by the user to re-register itself which isn't ideal... It means a user may turn on notifications from the OS settings and then assume that their push notifications should be back in business, but that won't happen if you toggle things from OS settings.

I am developing a live activity for my app and am running into issues on devices with dynamic islands. The live activity will randomly get in a state where it displays a spinner and does not update. For devices without dynamic islands, the activity works perfectly fine. I have tried breaking down the views to determine the root cause, but at times it seems very random. These are all TestFlight builds as we are currently developing the feature. I have tried using the console app and looking at the various processes that have been called out in other threads and cannot see any actual errors being logged. Looking for any pointers on how to pinpoint the root cause of this issue.

I have developed a LiveActivity on my product that supports DynamicIsland. Recently, two users encountered this situation while updating the app: LiveActivity was created with a status of. active, but after 100ms, it immediately started displaying as. dimiss. This process was repeated many times until the user restarted their iPhone and the display became normal A user's LiveActivity was successfully created with a status of. active, and the data was updated using the. update method normally; But this user's interface keeps showing a gray component empty state I am unable to obtain useful information regarding the bug encountered in processing. I would like to know how to obtain the reason why the user's LiveActivity has been modified to. dimiss by the iOS system in the face of these situations; How can I obtain useful information to determine the cause of the error when the user interface cannot display data without debugging. Thank you~

I'm struggling to understand what the impact of this flag is. Docs only say: For devices running iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 or later, you can add input-push-token: 1 to your payload to start a Live Activity and receive a new push token. After you receive a new push token, you can use it to send updates to a Live Activity. But things were working fine for iOS 17. Right? Does it somehow make the OS emit update tokens faster/more successfully? Should I include in all start, update, end events?

Hello, I would like to inquire about a specific behavior I've observed with Live Activities to determine if it is a bug. When our application is closed but the device is in use, an alarm triggers a Live Activity to appear at the top of the screen. However, it seems that tapping the background area of this Live Activity does not trigger the .widgetURL and .onOpenURL Could you please confirm if this is the intended behavior? or should I config another setting for desired action like trigger .onOpenURL? Thank you for your time and assistance. Best regards,

Hello, I have a question regarding the control over the Dynamic Island UI when my app is in the foreground. Scenario: A user is playing a song on Apple Music, so its Live Activity is active and visible in the Dynamic Island. Then, the user opens my app. Desired Behavior: While my app is in the foreground, I would like to temporarily hide or dismiss the dynamic island from Apple Music to provide a more immersive experience. When the user navigates away from my app, it's perfectly fine for the Dynamic Island to show dynamic island again. Is there an API that allows an app to temporarily suppress a Live Activity that was initiated by another application? My understanding of the iOS sandbox model suggests this might not be possible for security and privacy reasons, but I wanted to confirm if there's an intended way to handle this, especially for full-screen apps like games or video players. Thank you!

The APP was not awakened by system after start a liveactivity and the liveactivity has showed on lock screen.so the updatetoken wont send to our inner server and the liveactivity can not update,often like this,but sometimes it can work. it makes me confuse,and i don't know how should i can do,because the liveactivity like a black box,i can not analyse the data link.for example ,inner server send a start liveactivity,but it can not accept a updatetoken unless the user lanuch APP. i hope the liveactivity can start and update on background. And i have developed it as described in the document. Hope to get your help，thank you very much.

Just wanted to clarify some expected behaviors here. It seems that there are two distinct behaviors for Live Activity flows for freshly installed apps. When you start a Live Activity for the first time and the user hasn't yet clicked on Allow/Don't Allow in the activity interface, there are two different sequences: Starting a Live Activity locally Request a Live Activity locally via Swift Live Activity starts .pushTokenUpdates is immediately triggered, even if the Allow/Don't Allow buttons appear under the Activity UI Starting a Live Activity via push-to-start Send a push-to-start notification to launch a Live Activity Live Activity starts .pushTokenUpdates is not triggered, and .pushToken returns nil. If a user clicks on Allow in the Activity UI, only then is .pushTokenUpdates triggered.

Q1. Can you place a sound on an end event? That doesn't seem to work for us Additionally: Q2. Is there any way that after you send the end event, still have the Live Activity remain on the Dynamic Island until the dismissal-date? Currently when an end event is sent, it's abruptly ended from the Dynamic Island without any sound. Users are confused until minutes/hours later they see their Lock Screen.

Good morning, We are implementing Live Activities in a push-to-start flow. We wrap the listener for push to start tokens in a high priority task: if ptsListenerTask == nil || ptsListenerTask?.isCancelled == true { ptsListenerTask = Task(priority: .high) { [weak self] in for await pushToken in Activity<LiveAuctionAttributes>.pushToStartTokenUpdates { //Send token to back-end } } I've tried a few variations of this and they work well on most devices. I have seen a couple of devices that refuse to issue a push to start token. The user will have logging for the init flow and starting the PTS listener then the logs just go silent, nothing happens. One thing that seemed to work was getting the user to start a Live Activity manually (from our debugging tool) then the PTS token gets issued. This is not very reliable and working a mock live activity into the flow for obtaining a PTS token is a poor solution. Is anyone else seeing this and is there a known issue with obtaining PTS tokens? Thanks! Brad

I am a professor at the Mercer University School of Medicine (Macon, GA) and I teach a stress reduction course for first year medical students. I am developing an app to allow the students to trace their mediations as well as time them. Using ChatGPT with Xcode, I was able to get all the features in the app working except that the stopwatch timer would not continue when the iPhone goes to sleep. When ChatGPT made some changes, the build failed because automated signing failed and the com.apple developer.activity kit entitlement is missing I don’t see Live Activities in the capability section of signing & Capabilities and I don’t know how to fix the provisioning profile. How can I get help for this? Thank you!

I'm updating some of the views for a Live Activity, now that CarPlay can display Live Activities in iOS 26. My Activity is updated only with local updates from the iPhone (no push notifications), displaying a user's blood glucose. The activity updates fine in both CarPlay and in the Apple Watch Smart Stack, but in CarPlay, the previous values are not cleared when the new values are displayed, resulting in superimposed text and making it essentially unreadable. This only happens when the iPhone screen is off. As soon as the phone screen is woken up, even if the phone is not unlocked, the old values disappear and the display looks fine. I can't find anything in the API about clearing a display, so I'm wondering if this is a bug (especially since it clears when waking the phone screen). I'm running iOS 26.0.1 on my test phone. Thanks for any thoughts!

Hi, We need Wallet Boarding Pass Live Activity style countdown inside Live Activity. Requirements Show only hours+minutes (no seconds ever). Format examples (Turkish locale concept): T > 60 min: "1sa 14d" (HHh MMm) T < 60 min: "58d" At exactly zero show a single final zero value (e.g. "0d"). Do NOT show seconds or any upward (elapsed) counting after zero. When remaining time < 0 immediately replace display with status text (e.g. "ON TIME"). Never display negative or increasing elapsed time. Discovered Current Timer Methods (Observed) Method 1 (Text(date, style: .relative)): After reaching target it continues counting UP (should stop). Seconds appear automatically once remaining < 1 hour. Method 2 (Text(date, style: .timer)): After reaching target it continues counting UP (should stop). Seconds are always visible from start. Method 3 (Text(timerInterval: Date.now ... targetDate, countsDown: true)): Stops at target (no upward counting) but seconds are always visible; cannot limit to single zero then freeze before status swap. Requested Enhancement Provide a behavior where the countdown displays hours+minutes, renders a single zero-minute value at the boundary (no seconds), then transitions to supplied status text. Request Public API or configuration to: Select displayed units (hours, minutes only). Stop automatic updating after rendering the zero frame (prevent upward counting). Prevent post-target elapsed counting (no positive re-growth). Allow immediate swap-to-text after zero (remaining < 0) while permitting a single zero display at the boundary. Why Align UX with Wallet; need predictable single zero then status, no seconds, no elapsed confusion. Thank you.

Watching WWDC video: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10185/?time=481 It says: So when encoding your content state, do not set any custom encoding strategies. Otherwise, your JSON will be mismatched, and the system will fail to update your Live Activity So I'm just wondering if using JSONDecoder is allowed for decoding apps payloads for the UI of a Live Activity? Or is there a performance hit for this?

Description When starting Live Activities via ActivityKit push notifications, the “start” notification is received correctly on iPhone 16 Pro Max, but subsequent update or end push notifications are not. The same implementation on iPhone 16 Pro behaves as expected (both start and update/end notifications are delivered and processed). Environment Property Value Device (failing) iPhone 16 Pro Max Device (working) iPhone 16 Pro iOS Version 18.5 Xcode / SDK 16.2/ActivityKit / Push Notifications Network Wi-Fi / Cellular (both tested) Data Collection Method Devices connected via USB. Logs captured using Console.app. Log filtering applied for the liveactivitiesd daemon to isolate Live Activity behavior. Initial Triage/Observations Payload format confirmed compatible; no incompatible fields. APNs token remains the same across messages (no refresh). Identical ActivityKit subscriptions/participants on both devices. Server-side delivery is confirmed: iPhone 16 Pro receives all messages (start, update, end). Only iPhone 16 Pro Max fails to receive update or end push notifications. Log Analysis iPhone 16 Pro (Working) Push-to-Start successfully received: 13:45:20 - APSXPCDeliverMessageEvent: Created APSIncomingMessage 13:45:20 - Received message: eventType: start(SessionPushNotifications.IncomingMessage.EventType.StartParameters(attributesType: "AchToLSUpgradeAttributes", attributesData: 125 bytes, inputs: [])) 13:45:20 - Created activity: 1C081AC5-01AE-4EC0-8B67-5F2A9FAE2D60 13:45:45 - APSXPCDeliverMessageEvent: Created APSIncomingMessage 13:45:45 - Received message: eventType: end(dismissDate: Optional(2025-07-21 21:00:44 +0000)) 13:45:20 - Activity updated: 1C081AC5-01AE-4EC0-8B67-5F2A9FAE2D60 13:45:20 - Local activity did update: 1C081AC5-01AE-4EC0-8B67-5F2A9FAE2D60 iPhone 16 Pro Max (Failing) 13:56:39 - APSXPCDeliverMessageEvent: Created APSIncomingMessage 13:56:39 - Received message: eventType: start(SessionPushNotifications.IncomingMessage.EventType.StartParameters(attributesType: "AchToLSUpgradeAttributes", attributesData: 125 bytes, inputs: [])) 13:56:39 - Created activity: E6BBF691-0C7A-4791-98D2-6F1440D9932E **No subsequent APNs push-to-update or push-to-end messages received.** 13:56:39 - No destinations for event E6BBF691... of type start 13:56:40 - No destinations for event E6BBF691... of type update Questions for Apple Engineering Are there known issues with ActivityKit push notifications specifically on iPhone 16 Pro Max devices? What additional diagnostic logs (system, APNs, liveactivitiesd) would be most helpful to collect? Could device-specific power management, notification settings, or OS-level changes on Pro Max models affect Live Activity updates? Are there differences in how Live Activity push subscriptions or routing are handled on iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Pro that could lead to this issue?

We are currently using Live Activities in our app and supporting both of the following use cases: Starting a Live Activity directly from the app using ActivityKit APIs. Starting a Live Activity from the backend using the start token. In the first case (initiated from the app), the OS generates an update token, and we are able to continuously update the Live Activity via our backend—even if the user has not explicitly provided "Allow" or "Always Allow" consent from the lock screen. This works as expected. In the second case (initiated from the backend), if the user does provide consent ("Allow" or "Always Allow") from the lock screen, we receive the update token and can continue updating the Live Activity. However, if the user does not provide consent, the OS does not provide the update token, and we are unable to send further updates. Question: Is it possible to receive the update token from the OS when the Live Activity is started from the backend, without the user explicitly providing "Allow" or "Always Allow" consent from the lock screen? We would appreciate any clarification or official documentation related to this behavior. Thank you!

Regular apns will give you a willPresent callback and there you can decide to suppress showing the notification or suppress its sound etc. I know the iOS app will give you callbacks for when there's a contentUpdate, yet that doesn't give the option to change the sound. Is there a way to suppress sound of a received Live Activity when app is in foreground?

A Live Activity relies on its app being in the background , but contrary to a widget it does not have a timeline. Our app "in the making" is sandboxed and does not need to receive ActivityKit push notifications How is the app "maintained in life" and not entirely killed for the duration of the activity - Apple documentation says up to 8 hours ? Is it necessary for us to do something to maintain it, like to trick the system , play a white noise audio background ...?