Apple’s new Live Activities feature for iPhone Lock Screens and iPhone 14 Pro models with Dynamic Island is available with the release of iOS 16.1. Read on to find out what it does and how to turn it on.
What Are Live Activities?
With Live Activities, you can keep tabs on what’s going on in the world from your phone’s Lock Screen thanks to persistent, interactive notifications that are always up to date. You can check the latest score of the game you’re watching or keep an eye on your incoming Uber driver while you wait for them on the Lock Screen.
Live Activities on the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max are also compatible with Dynamic Island. For instance, during a Premier League match, Dynamic Island will display a live-updating scoreboard with the current goal totals for both teams on either side of the True Depth camera pill. When held down for an extended period of time, Dynamic Island unfolds to reveal game stats and play-by-play.
Instead, the score appears as a widget on the Lock Screen of an iPhone 14 Pro that is locked. Live Activities are restricted to the Lock Screen on the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, and all other iPhone models without the Dynamic Island.
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How to Enable Live Activities
If you have an iPhone running iOS 16.1 or later, you can enable Live Activities for the Lock Screen in Settings.
- Invoke the device’s configuration utility.
- Find the Face ID & Passcode option and hit it.
- Type in the code to proceed.
- Below the “Allow Access When Locked” section, turn the Live Activities switch to the “ON” setting.
Apps That Support Live Activities
Several third-party apps in the App Store take advantage of Apple’s Live Activities API, which was released to developers.
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How to Use Live Activities With the TV App
In addition, as of iOS 16.2, Canadian and American customers can test out Apple’s TV app functionality by launching the TV app and hitting the Follow button on a supported sports game. Your Lock Screen and/or Dynamic Island will then reflect your Live Activity score.
Sports games listed in the TV app may or may not support Live Activities, so if you don’t see a Follow button, it’s because the function hasn’t been activated or the game doesn’t allow it. To see if it’s active, head to the Settings menu and navigate to TV > Live Activities > Enable Live Activities. You can also enable More Frequent Updates for Live Activities from this screen, but be warned that this may cause your iPhone’s battery to deplete more quickly.
Users in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, and South Korea can watch Major League Baseball games live in the TV app’s Live Activities section, while users in the United States and Canada can watch NBA and Premier League games live in the TV app’s Live Activities section. In the future, this option will most likely be made available for use in other sports leagues.