Live Activity creates successfully but never displays on lock screen or Dynamic Island ( iOS 26.4.1, Xcode 26.4)

Question

Skylitmus OP

Created 2d

Replies 1

Boosts 0

Participants 2

Environment:

Xcode 26.4 (17E192)
iOS 26.4.1
iPhone 15 Pro
Project uses PBXFileSystemSynchronizedRootGroup (Xcode 26 format)

Setup:

Widget Extension target named ModusWidgetExtension
Bundle ID: com.calvin.Modus.ModusWidget
NSSupportsLiveActivities = YES in both main app and widget extension Info.plist
Live Activities enabled in Settings → Modus
Live Activities enabled in Settings → Face ID & Passcode → Allow Access When Locked
Background App Refresh enabled
Push Notifications capability on both targets
ActivityAttributes struct added to both targets via file target membership

Behaviour:

ActivityAuthorizationInfo().areActivitiesEnabled returns true
Activity.request() succeeds and returns a valid activity ID
No error is thrown
Nothing appears on lock screen or Dynamic Island in foreground or background
Widget preview in Xcode renders correctly for all presentations (compact, minimal, expanded, lock screen)

Console output from liveactivitiesd filtered logs:

"Foreground process is permitted to update activity"
"XPCInputParticipant has no activity for update" (ERROR — repeated)
"Received state update for [app<com.calvin.Modus>], running-active-NotVisible"

The activity is being created and the system is receiving state updates, but the widget extension is not rendering it. The XPCInputParticipant error suggests the widget extension process cannot find the activity created by the main app.

Boost

Answer 1

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

2d

Thanks for the post, this is extremely interesting to me. Can you post as much code as possible to see how you use the LiveActivitiy and is configured in the main entry?

So the system successfully registers the activity from the main app, but when it asks to render it, the Widget Extension fails to provide a matching ActivityConfiguration? And your Xcode previews work, the UI code is valid, but it is not being successfully exposed to the system at runtime?

Even if your Live Activity code is perfectly written and included in the target, the system will not know it exists unless it is explicitly instantiated in your extension's main entry point. Can you provide the code for that for me to review?

If you have standard home screen widgets alongside your Live Activity, you must include both in the bundle.

If the LiveActivity is missing from this bundle, the OS will create the activity in the background, but the extension will silently fail to render it, resulting in the error you are seeing I believe.

Looking forward to learn more so I can help better.

Albert   Worldwide Developer Relations.

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