Is there a supported way to schedule a Live Activity update on the device for a known future date, so the system applies it while the app is suspended? It should update on the Lock Screen when the phone is locked, and in the Dynamic Island when the user is in another app, ideally with an alert. Local notifications can be scheduled for an exact date, but I haven't found an equivalent for Live Activities.
My use case is a rest timer in a workout app that keeps all data on the device, with no server. When a rest starts, the app knows when it ends, and at that moment the Live Activity should show the next set and the time since the rest ended.
Today the app schedules a local notification for the alert and sets the Live Activity's stale date to the rest's end. That has some problems:
- The stale date is applied a minute or two late in my testing, so the Live Activity shows 0:00 after the notification has already arrived.
- Updating from the app only works while it's running, which in practice means during a workout mirrored from Apple Watch. Even then, an alert sent with the update while the phone was locked appeared about a minute late, so the Live Activity never alerts.
- Push updates need a server, which this app doesn't have by design.
- A scheduled Live Activity start (iOS 26) creates a second activity instead of updating the existing one.
Am I missing an API or a pattern for this? I've filed FB25210471 asking for it in case there isn't one.