Live Activities and the always-on displays of recent iPhones have been perfect partners for a couple of years now, letting a user check real-time data without needing to unlock their phone.
Whether it’s to track a food delivery, find out what song you’re listening to, or check a flight’s status, Live Activities have become invaluable – but they may actually get worse with iOS 18.
As spotted by 9to5Mac, an app developer, Nico, posted on X (formerly Twitter) to say that his app, which tracks a cyclist’s speed and needs to update every second, will now only update once every 5 to 15 seconds – rendering it almost useless.
So it is official now. LiveActivities were never designed for real-time experiences :/ https://t.co/Zc1musx6ae pic.twitter.com/IjOq8uV2J7August 28, 2024
iOS 18 could break some Live Activities
As Nico shares, Apple is suggesting this is an intentional change because the constant writing of data to an iPhone’s storage could lead to additional wear.
Interestingly, the company’s response suggests “real-time experiences” were never supposed to be supported by Live Activities, which may affect the usefulness of plenty of other apps that lean on the same framework.
Still, it’s curious that Apple’s own developer site suggests a use case where a “workout app could show real time fitness metrics”, but the follow-up for Nico’s app suggests the opposite.
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