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--- title: Live Activities platform: universal category: technologies url: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/live-activities quality_score: 0.49 content_length: 27328 last_updated: 2025-07-20T03:45:41.959Z keywords: ["live activities","universal","technologies","status","system","controls","widgets","presentation","layout","buttons","design","visual","color","animation","icons","typography"] has_code_examples: false has_images: false is_fallback: false --- Live Activities A Live Activity displays up-to-date information from your app, allowing people to view the progress of an activity, event, or task at a glance. Live Activities provide frequent information updates that appear in glanceable locations such as the Lock Screen, on i Phone in Stand By, and the Dynamic Island. Starting in watch OS 11 and i OS 18, Live Activities also appear in the Smart Stack on Apple Watch. For apps with frequent content and status updates that go beyond the existing push notification system, Live Activities can be a more flexible way to keep people updated about live events, activities, or tasks over a couple of hours. In addition to frequently updating displayed data, they offer a way for people to interact with the information. For example, the Live Activity of a food delivery app might display the time remaining until your order arrives; a sports app could provide live in-game information for their Live Activity; and a workout app could show real time fitness metrics and offer interactive controls to pause or cancel the workout. In addition to appearing at the top of the notification list on the Lock Screen, Live Activities appear in the following locations:On devices that support the Dynamic Island, the system displays Live Activities in a persistent location around the True Depth camera. On devices that don’t support the Dynamic Island, the system can display a Live Activity update in a banner that appears briefly at the top of the screen. On i Phone in Stand By, a Live Activity fills the entire screen to offer glanceable information at a distance, or it takes up minimal space at the top of the screen to leave space for widgets. On Apple Watch, when a Live Activity begins on a connected i Phone, the Smart Stack automatically appears with the Live Activity displayed at the top. Best practices Offer a Live Activity for tasks and live events that have a defined beginning and end. People use Live Activities to track activities or ongoing tasks of short and medium duration. Don’t offer a Live Activity for a task that exceeds eight hours, and always end a Live Activity immediately after the task completes or the event ends. Consider each Live Activity presentation. Your Live Activity must support all locations, devices, and their corresponding appearances. Because Live Activities are a system-wide feature, carefully consider the amount of information your Live Activity displays and create a layout that best supports each of the places in the system where it appears. Prioritize important information to make it easy to understand at a quick glance. Your Live Activity doesn’t need to display everything. Think about what information people find most useful and prioritize the size and scale of it relative to other content you display. When a person wants to access more information, they can a tap the Live Activity to view your app where you can display more information if necessary. Don’t use a Live Activity to display ads or promotions. Live Activities help people stay informed about ongoing events and tasks, so it’s important to display only information that’s related to those events and tasks. Avoid displaying sensitive information in a Live Activity. A Live Activity is visually prominent and could be viewed by casual observers. If people might consider the information in your Live Activity to be sensitive or private, display an innocuous summary and let people tap the Live Activity to access the sensitive information in your app. Don’t add elements to your app that draw attention to the Dynamic Island. Your Live Activity appears in the Dynamic Island while your app isn’t in use, and other items can appear in the Dynamic Island when your app is open. Starting, updating, and ending a Live Activity Start a Live Activity when people expect it. In Settings, people can turn off Live Activities for your app. To make it less likely for someone to turn them off, avoid surprising people by starting a Live Activity they don’t expect. If necessary, give people control over beginning and ending Live Activities with buttons. However, it can make sense to automatically initiate a Live Activity if a person starts a task or event. For example, ordering food for delivery or making a rideshare request could automatically start a Live Activity. Similarly, a sports app could offer a Live Activity that starts automatically for every match of a person’s favorite team. On devices that run i OS 17.2 and i Pad OS 17.2 and later, the Live Activity can start with a remote push notification while the app is in the background. If you automatically start a Live Activity, display a button or toggle that represents this behavior and allows people to adjust it to their preferences. Offer App Shortcuts that start your Live Activities. App Shortcuts allow you to expose app functionality to the system so people can access it in various contexts. For example, an App Shortcut that starts your Live Activity allows people to track events using the Action button on i Phone. For more information on App Shortcuts, see App Shortcuts. Update a Live Activity only when new content is available. If the underlying content or status doesn’t change, show the same content or status until it changes. Alert people about Live Activity updates only if it’s essential to get their attention. Live Activity alerts light up the screen and by default play the notification sound for explicit updates the user shouldn’t miss. They also show the expanded presentation in the Dynamic Island or the Lock Screen presentation as a banner on devices that don’t support the Dynamic Island. Avoid Alert ing people too often or Alert ing them to updates that aren’t crucial because a person might deactivate Live Activities for your app in Settings. Additionally, don’t use push notifications alongside your Live Activity to alert people about Live Activity updates. If you offer tracking of multiple events, consider cycling through events instead of starting a new Live Activity for each event. Cycling through events makes it easier for people to keep track of multiple events. For example, a sports app could offer to track all soccer matches that happen in one evening. Instead of starting many Live Activities, the app could update a single Live Activity with key events across all matches like goals, substitutions, fouls, and the start and end of each half in a single dynamic layout. Consider removing the Live Activity from the Lock Screen shortly after the conclusion of your Live Activity. In the Dynamic Island, the system immediately removes a Live Activity when it ends. On the Lock Screen and in the Smart Stack in watch OS, the system shows a Live Activity for up to four hours after it ends. Depending on the duration of your Live Activity, showing a summary in your Lock Screen presentation may only be relevant for a brief time after it ends. For example, a rideshare app could end the Live Activity when a ride completes and configure it to remain on the Lock Screen for 30 minutes — long enough for people to view the ride summary and leave a tip for the driver. Consider choosing a custom removal time that’s proportional to the duration of your Live Activity. In most cases, 15 to 30 minutes is adequate. Design Create a Live Activity that matches your app’s visual aesthetic and personality in both dark and light appearances. Applying your app’s personality and visual aesthetic makes it easier for people to recognize your Live Activity. Aim to create a visual connection to your app with your Live Activity design. For example, consider using your app icon for inspiration. If you use a logo mark as part of your brand in a Live Activity, display it without a container. Don’t use the entire app icon. Use a bold color for your Live Activity background. If your app has a recognizable key color people associate with it, use the key color for the background of your Live Activity. This color creates a strong foundation for your design that can make it more recognizable and distinguish it from other Live Activities and notifications. Creating Live Activity layouts Don’t replicate notification layouts. Create a unique layout that’s specific to the information that appears in the Live Activity. Make your layout as compact as possible. Adjust the size and placement of elements in your Live Activity so they fit together. Create as compact of a layout as possible that only uses as much space as you need to clearly display its content. Dynamically change the height of your Live Activity. When there is less information to show, reduce the height of the Live Activity to only use the space needed for the content. When more information becomes available, increase the height to display additional content. For example, a rideshare app might display a more compact Live Activity without additional details while it locates a driver. The app’s height extends as more information is available to display the estimated pickup time, driver details, and so on. Similarly, a sports app could use a more compact layout during half time of a soccer match when the teams rest. When the second half of the match starts, the Live Activity could expand to display key moments like fouls, goals, and so on. Adapt to different screen sizes and Live Activity presentations. A Live Activity scales to adapt to screen sizes of different devices. Ensure it looks great on every device by supplying content at appropriate sizes. As you create layouts and assets for various devices and scale factors, use the values listed in Specifications as guidance, but note that the actual size on screen may vary or change. When separating a block of content, place it in an inset shape or use a thick line. Don’t draw content all the way to the edge of the Dynamic Island. Use consistent margins and concentric placement for your elements. Use even, matching margins between rounded shapes and the edges of the Live Activity to ensure a harmonious fit. For example, when placing a rounded rectangle near the corner of your Live Activity, make sure to match the element’s corner radius to the outer corner radius of the Live Activity by subtracting the margin. Use a Swift UI container to apply the correct corner radius. For developer guidance, see Container Relative Shape. Avoid placing text and nonrounded shapes too close to the margins. Don’t place content in a way that intrudes into the rounded shape of the Live Activity. Try to keep content compact and snug within a margin that is concentric to the outer edge of the Live Activity. To help place nonrounded content correctly, you can blur elements and aim to make the border of the resulting rounded, blurred shapes as concentric as possible with even margins to make them fit best with the outer perimeter. Adding transitions and animating content updates In addition to extending and contracting transitions, Live Activities use system and custom animations with a maximum duration of two seconds. Note that the system doesn’t perform animations on Always-On displays with reduced luminance. Use animations to reinforce the information you’re communicating and to bring attention to updates. In addition to moving the position of elements in your layout, you can animate elements in and out with the default content replace transition, or create custom transitions using scale, opacity, and movement. For example, a sports app could use a numeric content transition to increase or decrease important numbers for a match or gently fade a timer in and out when it reaches zero. Animate layout changes. For some content updates — for example, when more information becomes available, or when the Live Activity expands to the full screen in Stand By — it can make sense to update the layout of your Live Activity. When your Live Activity transitions to a new layout, animate existing elements to their new positions rather than removing them and animating them back in. This kind of update preserves as much of the existing layout as possible during the transition. Try to avoid overlapping elements. Sometimes, it’s best to animate out certain elements and then re-animate them in at a new position to avoid colliding with other parts of your transition. For example, when animating items in lists, only animate the element that moves to a new position and use a fade-in-and-out transitions for the other list items. Note For developer guidance, see Displaying live data with Live Activities. Offering interactivity Make sure tapping the Live Activity opens your app at the right location. Take people directly to details and actions related to the Live Activity — don’t require them to navigate to the relevant screen. For developer guidance on Swift UI views that can deep link to specific screens in your app, see Link and widget URL(\_:).Offer quick controls. Starting with i OS 17 and i Pad OS 17, the expanded presentation in the Dynamic Island and the Lock Screen presentation can include buttons or toggles to offer people a way to perform tasks directly from the Live Activity. However, these elements can take up space that might otherwise display useful information. As a result, it’s important that you only include them if they are offering essential functionality that’s directly related to your Live Activity. For example, the Live Activity of the Timer app allows people to pause and cancel a timer. Similarly, a fitness app could allow people to pause and resume an ongoing workout. Let people respond to event or progress updates. Offer buttons or toggles to allow people to respond to updated data. For example, a rideshare app could show a button in its Live Activity that people tap to get in touch with the driver while they are waiting for their ride to arrive. The Lock Screen On the Lock Screen, the system uses the Lock Screen presentation to display a banner at the bottom of the screen. In this presentation, use a layout similar to the expanded presentation. On devices that don’t support the Dynamic Island, the system uses the Lock Screen presentation of your Live Activity as a banner that briefly overlays the Home Screen or another app. This overlay only happens when you alert people about an update to your Live Activity with an alert configuration. Carefully consider using a custom background color and opacity on the Lock Screen. If you set a background color or image for Live Activities that appear on the Lock Screen, test colors to be sure they offer enough contrast — especially tint colors on devices in Always-On with reduced luminance. Note that you can’t choose a custom background color for Live Activity presentations that appear in the Dynamic Island. Choose colors that work well on a personalized Lock Screen. People customize their Lock Screen with wallpapers, custom tint colors, and widgets. To make a Live Activity fit a custom Lock Screen aesthetic while remaining legible, apply custom tint colors and opacity sparingly. Make sure your design, assets, and colors look great and offer enough contrast in Dark Mode and on an Always-On display. By default, a Live Activity on the Lock Screen uses a light background color in Light Mode and a dark background color in Dark Mode. If you apply a custom background color to your Lock Screen presentation, use a color that works well in both modes or use a different color for each mode. Additionally, verify your Live Activity design on an Always-On display with reduced luminance because the system adapts colors as needed in this appearance. For guidance, see Dark Mode and Always On; for developer guidance, see About asset catalogs. Verify the generated color of the dismiss button on the Lock Screen. The system automatically generates a matching dismiss button based on the background and foreground colors of your Live Activity. Be sure to check that the generated colors match your Live Activity design and adjust them if needed using activity System Action Foreground Color(\_:)Use standard margins to align with notifications. The standard layout margins are 14 points for Live Activities on the Lock Screen. In some cases, such as for the placement of graphics or buttons, you might need to use tighter margins, but avoid crowding the edges and creating a cluttered appearance. For developer guidance, see padding(\_:\_:).Stand By When a person taps the minimal presentation on i Phone in Stand By, the system scales the Lock Screen appearance by 2 x to fill the entire screen. If you use a custom background color for your Live Activity, the system automatically extends it to the whole screen to create a seamless, full-screen design. Update your layout to take advantage of the larger presentation. Display additional information and make sure assets look great in the scaled-up presentation. Consider removing a custom background color in Stand By. Without a custom background color, your Live Activity seamlessly blends with the device bezel and achieves a softer look that integrates with a person’s surroundings. Additionally, when you use the default background color, the system also scales your Live Activity slightly larger because it no longer needs to account for the margins around the True Depth camera. Use standard margins and avoid extending graphic elements to the edge of the screen. Without standard margins, content gets cut off as the Live Activity extends, making it feel broken. To visually separate regions of your layout, use a line or a container shape instead. Verify your design in Night Mode. In Night Mode, the system automatically applies a visual treatment to your Live Activity to give it a red tint. Be sure to check that your Live Activity design uses colors that provide enough contrast in Night Mode. The Dynamic Island The Dynamic Island serves as a unified home for alerts and indicators of ongoing activity. Design your layouts to feel at home within the shape and background color of the Dynamic Island, while preserving your Live Activity’s identity through use of color, iconography, and animation. Use color to express the character and identity of your app. Live Activities in the Dynamic Island use a black opaque background. Consider using bold colors for text and objects to convey the personality and brand of your app. Bold colors make your Live Activity recognizable at a glance, and make it feel like a small, glanceable part of your app that stands out from other Live Activities. Additionally, bold colors can help reinforce the relationship between shapes, text, and icons in the Live Activity itself. Tint your Live Activity’s key line color so that it matches your content. When the background is dark — for example, in Dark Mode — a key line appears around the Dynamic Island to distinguish it from other content. Choose a color for this key line that’s consistent with the color of other elements in your Live Activity. Ensure text is easy to read. Use large, heavier–weight text — a medium weight or higher. Avoid small text that’s hard to read. Use even margins that leave enough space between your content and the edge of the Dynamic Island. Apply an even margin to elements all the way around the edge of the Dynamic Island, including the corners. This kind of margin prevents elements from poking into the rounded edges and creating visual tension. Animate Live Activity updates to change the shape of the Dynamic Island dynamically. Not only do animations bring a person’s attention to updated information, they underline the active nature of your Live Activity in the Dynamic Island. Compact presentation In the Dynamic Island, the system uses the compact presentation when only one Live Activity is active. The compact presentation consists of two separate elements: one that displays on the leading side of the True Depth camera, and one that displays on the trailing side. Even though the compact presentation offers limited space, it displays up-to-date information about your app’s Live Activity. Communicate the most important information of your Live Activity. Use the compact presentation to show dynamic information. Display live, up-to-date information that’s key to the Live Activity. Ensure unified information and design of the compact presentations in the Dynamic Island. The True Depth camera separates the compact leading and compact trailing presentations of a Live Activity, but make sure the contents of both read as a single piece of information. Using consistent color or typography can help create a connection between leading and trailing presentations. Keep information as narrow as possible and ensure content is snug against the True Depth camera. Try not to obscure key information in the status bar, and maintain a balanced layout with similarly sized views in leading and trailing presentations. Don’t place padding between content and the True Depth camera. For example, use shortened units or less precise data to avoid creating an appearance that’s too wide or unbalanced. Link to the relevant scene in your app. People tap a compact Live Activity to open the app and get more details about the event or task. They don’t need to view a generic scene in your app. Make sure to open the same scene in your app when people tap the leading or trailing presentation. Minimal presentation When multiple Live Activities are active, the system uses the minimal presentation to display two of them in the Dynamic Island. One Live Activity appears attached to the Dynamic Island while the other appears detached. Depending on its content size, the detached minimal Live Activity appears circular or oval. As with a compact Live Activity, people tap a minimal Live Activity to open the app to get more details about the event or task or touch and hold it to use essential controls and view additional content in the expanded presentation. Ensure that your Live Activity is recognizable in the minimal presentation. If possible, display updated information instead of only presenting a logo, but ensure that people are able to quickly recognize your app. For example, the compact presentation for a Live Activity of the Timer app displays the remaining time instead of using a static icon. Expanded presentation When people touch and hold a Live Activity in a compact or minimal presentation, the system displays the content in the expanded presentation. Maintain the relative placement of elements to create a coherent layout between compact and expanded presentations. The expanded presentation is an enlarged version of the compact presentation. Ensure that information and layouts expand predictably when the Live Activity transitions from compact to expanded presentation. Use a shorter or a tall height for the expanded presentation. If your content requires a small amount of vertical screen space, choose a height for the expanded presentation that clearly retains a capsule shape with continuous curves at the leading and trailing sides. If your expanded presentation requires more vertical screen space, use a height that’s rectangular with rounded edges. Avoid an in-between height that’s harder to visually resolve and less aesthetically pleasing. Wrap content tightly around the True Depth camera. Try to avoid leaving space on the leading and trailing sides and below the True Depth camera. Arranging content close to the True Depth camera uses space more efficiently, and helps diminish the visual presence of the True Depth camera. Not supported in mac OS, tv OS, or vision OS.watch OSStarting with watch OS 11, when a Live Activity begins on an i Phone with a connected Apple Watch, the Smart Stack appears with the Live Activity at the top. By default, the view displayed in the Smart Stack combines the leading and trailing elements from the Live Activity’s compact presentation on i Phone. For the best experience, create a custom layout specifically for your Live Activity in the Smart Stack.i Phone compact view Default Smart Stack view Custom Smart Stack view If you have a watch OS app, when someone taps the Live Activity in the Smart Stack, it opens the watch OS app directly. If you don’t have a watch OS app, tapping opens a full-screen view with a button to hand off to your app on the connected i Phone. Design a custom layout for your Live Activity in watch OS. While the system provides a default view automatically, a custom layout designed for Apple Watch can provide more detailed information, and add interactive functionality like a button or toggle. For developer guidance, see Activity Family. Show only what’s necessary to communicate significant states of the Live Activity. It’s important to use space in the Smart Stack as efficiently as possible. Think of the most useful information that a Live Activity can convey:Progress, like the estimated arrival time of a delivery Interactivity, like a stopwatch or timer Significant changes, like when a sports score updates Use interactivity for simple, direct actions. While the Live Activity view on Apple Watch can contain a button or toggle, be considerate when adding them. Interactive elements are best for activities that people activate only once or temporarily pause and resume, like music, workouts, or apps that access the microphone to record live audio. Use only one custom button or toggle per view. Because space is extremely limited, having multiple smaller or more tightly spaced controls increases the likelihood of people accidentally tapping the wrong control. Prefer familiar layouts for your custom Live Activity views. Templates with the system default margins and recommended sizes for text are available in Apple Design Resources. Adopting these defaults ensures that your Live Activity fits in with the visual language of the Smart Stack and remains legible at a glance. Specifications As you design your Live Activities, use the following values for guidance.i OS Live Activity dimensions All values listed in the tables below are in points. Screen dimensions (portrait)Compact leading Compact trailing Minimal (width given as a range)Expanded (height given as a range)Lock Screen (height given as a range)430 x 93262.33 x 36.6762.33 x 36.6736.67–45 x 36.67408 x 84–160408 x 84–160393 x 85252.33 x 36.6752.33 x 36.6736.67–45 x 36.67371 x 84–160371 x 84–160 The Dynamic Island uses a corner radius of 44 points, and its rounded corner shape matches the True Depth camera. Presentation type Device Dynamic Island width (points)Compact or minimali Phone 16 Pro Max 250 i Phone 16 Pro 230 i Phone 16 Plus 250 i Phone 16230 i Phone 15 Pro Max 250 i Phone 15 Pro 230 i Phone 15 Plus 250 i Phone 15230 i Phone 14 Pro Max 250 i Phone 14 Pro 230 Expandedi Phone 16 Pro Max 408 i Phone 16 Pro 371 i Phone 16 Plus 408 i Phone 16371 i Phone 15 Pro Max 408 i Phone 15 Pro 371 i Phone 15 Plus 408 i Phone 15371 i Phone 14 Pro Max 408 i Phone 14 Pro 371 i Pad OS Live Activity dimensions All values listed in the table below are in points. Screen dimensions (portrait)Lock Screen (height given as a range)1366 x 1024500 x 84–1601194 x 834425 x 84–1601012 x 834425 x 84–1601080 x 810425 x 84–1601024 x 768425 x 84–160 Resources Developer documentation Activity Kit Swift UIWidget Kit Developing a Widget Kit strategy Videos Design Live Activities for Apple Watch Design dynamic Live Activities Meet Activity Kit