Sometimes it’s great to be able to pick up your phone, see exactly the information you want to see, and immediately put it away without having to unlock it and run the risk of being snagged. This is the idea behind Live Activities, an underutilized iOS feature that allows apps to display real-time updates on the lock screen and dynamic island.
If you’ve ever listened to music, set the time, or hailed an Uber, you’ve seen Live Activity—it’s just a way to get passive updates about something that’s going on, right on your lock screen. Live Activities are different from lock screen widgets that are displayed on the touchable half of the screen. They look more like a notification than a widget and generally include some sort of real-time information.
Live Activity offers a great way to passively follow all kinds of information, from sports scores to tides. Here are some of the best apps I could find that use this feature.
Get flight times from your airline or Flighty
As I run through the airport, the last thing I want to do is keep unlocking my phone to find information like departure time and gate number.
Some airlines, including United in the US, offer Live Activity directly in their apps. But if your airline doesn’t, you’re out of luck: the Flighty app offers Live Activity, which collects such information in real time. Even better: give the app access to your calendar and it’ll automatically pull up all the flights on your schedule, meaning you don’t even have to open the app to see live activity on your lock screen—it all happens automatically. No more trying to walk and scroll through your flight information. The main downside: it’s not free. Flightly subscriptions start at $48 per year, which is steep, but you get a few free flights to try everything out before you commit.
Get sports scores from Apple TV or Sports Alerts
Guess who’s a Red Wings fan?
Credit: Justin Pot
Sometimes you’re actively watching the game, and sometimes you’re doing something else while it’s happening. Live Activity is great for this: you can occasionally glance at your phone to see the score, along with a few other key stats, and then get back to what you’re doing. Apple offers Live Activities for several sports in the Apple TV app (I don’t know why you can’t access them from the new Apple Sports app—let’s hope that’s coming). Apple TV only offers live action for the NBA, MLB and MLS, along with several European sports leagues.
However, if you want football and hockey scores or just want to have all your scores in one place, check out Sports Alerts. This free app offers scores for many more leagues than Apple Sports, including women’s leagues, and you can get live action for any game that offers a score. The only downside to both this and the Apple TV offering is that there’s no way to automatically start an activity when the team you’re following plays a game—you have to go into the app and start the activity manually.
Get live tide updates with tide charts
Never a miscommunication.
Credit: Justin Pot
Whether you live near the ocean or only visit it occasionally, it’s important to know what the tides are doing. The Tide Charts app tells you just that, giving you a quick way to check the tide without having to fully open your phone. Unfortunately, Live Activity is currently not offered in the free version of the app. The full version costs $30 a year, which is probably only worth it if your business depends on tide tracking.
Get election results from Apple News
Credit: Justin Pot
It’s an election year. For some people, the healthiest thing is to wait until the day after to find out who won (if we’re lucky). If you can’t bring yourself to do that, but also don’t want to keep hitting refresh on the results page, consider using Live Activity via Apple News. If there’s an election—including any of the upcoming primaries—you can turn on live updates and see the results on your lock screen as they come in. I tried this during the South Carolina primary and it works well.
How to enable Live Activities on your iPhone
If you want to start using Live Activities on your iPhone, you’ll need to make sure you’ve turned them on first. Here’s how to do it (provided you’re running iOS 16.1 or later):
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Open the Settings app
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Scroll down to Face ID & Passcode
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Scroll down until you see the “Allow access when locked” subsection and make sure the slider next to Live Activity is green.