22 Examples of Apps Using Live Activities to Enrich Their UX

In late 2022, Apple released a compelling new Live Activities feature as part of their iOS 16 update. This unique feature is an interactive push notification designed by Apple to enable iOS apps to provide real-time updates to users from the iPhone lock screen. Following Apple's ActivityKit updates in December 2023, users are no longer required to open the app in order to view these powerful notifications.

What do Live Activities look like?

There are a few different presentation options available for Live Activities, including the Lock Screen presentation and “Dynamic Island” presentation. Apple’s Dynamic Island Live Activity display can be presented as a compact or minimal notification that expands when tapped.

How to Use Live Activities in Different App Categories

So, what iPhone apps currently use iOS 16 Live Activities and how are they using it? Below, we’ve included some interesting use cases that showcase the versatility and value of adding this feature to your iOS App.

Games & Task Apps Using Live Activities

Calzy

This modern calculator app is lauded for its elegant, flexible UI and broad functionality. They were an early adopter of iOS Live Activities as a means to allow users to stay on top of calculations while moving across different apps and screens.

Forest

This unique productivity app helps motivate and reward task completion by allowing users to plant virtual trees that grow throughout a dedicated focus period or die when a user exits the task early. They’re using Live Activities to help users easily visualize their progress from their lock screen during a set focus period.

Focused Work

Focused Work is another popular productivity app inspired by the Pomodoro technique. They use Live Activities to help users manage and track working sessions with greater ease.

Navigation

Park Mobile

The parking meter app, Park Mobile, has been using push notifications to remind users when their meter is about to expire. Now, they've upgraded their communication strategy by using Live Activities to provide a real-time countdown in addition to periodic notifications to provide a more intuitive and seamless user experience.

Citymapper

This transportation app helps users navigate with turn-by-turn directions for public transit, cycling, walking, and scootering. They use Live Activities to provide better lock screen navigation, with real-time ETAs and directions about when to make your next turn, exit the subway, and more.

Travel Apps Using Live Activities

Uber

Travel and delivery apps have one of the most straightforward use cases for Live Activities. Uber has quickly taken advantage of the Live Activities Dynamic Island widget to showcase driver information and provide real-time trip progress visualizations and pickup countdowns.

Flighty

This live flight tracker provides detailed flight maps, live tracking, and delay forecasting. Although there are many airline-specific flight apps on the market, this one stands out for its thoughtful interface and timely notifications. They’ve leveraged Live Activities to help users track flight progress in real-time and stay on top of other important details such as gate and seat changes, early or late arrivals, and more.

News & Media Apps Using Live Activities

MLB App

The MLB app allows users to easily track their favorite team's games with dynamic Live Activities that display the current score, inning, outs, pitch count, and runners on base. Their clean and effective use of the Dynamic Island widget makes it easy to stay current with all the pertinent game details with one glance.

NBA App

The NBA app for iPhone recently rolled out Live Activities as an intuitive way to keep track of live game scores and view featured game stats.

FotMob

FotMob gives soccer fans access to live match scores, stats, and storylines for games around the globe. They use Live Activities to make it easy to track multiple football matches in real-time.

BoxBox Club

BoxBox Club is an app for motorsports fans to follow live racing events, schedules, and news. Their Live Activities have a simple and sleek design that aligns with their brand style and makes it easy to view key performance metrics.

Runcaster

Like many popular sports apps, this app for Cricket fans makes it easy to follow live games even when you don't have the app open.

Weather Apps Using Live Activities

CARROT Weather

This highly-rated, robust weather app provides current, hourly, and daily weather forecasts coupled with funny in-app dialogue, amusing animations, and lots of brand personality. Their ability to provide detailed information in an intuitive and delightful way has boosted their brand loyalty amidst a sea of competition. Because timely communication is their bread and butter, Live Activities was an alluring feature to enhance their UX further.

Social Media Apps Using Live Activities

Apollo

The award-winning Reddit app Apollo, now provides user with the option to follow a comment thread in real-time from their lock screen by selecting “Start Live Activity” when viewing a comment thread on a post. Users can then keep the Live Activity or simply click “Turn Off” when they’re done following the thread.

Health & Fitness Apps Using Live Activities

Slopes

This ski and snowboard app provides live GPS tracking, maps, and forecast information to users. Now, they’re using Live Activities to make it even easier for users to track their progress in elevation, distance, and time and keep tabs on friends who are on the mountain.

Gentler Streaks

This popular exercise app uses Live Activities to let users track their workout progress and health metrics like BPM from the lock screen.

Pillow Sleep Tracker

This smart alarm and snore tracker app is designed to help users analyze their sleep cycles with or without an Apple watch. They use Live Activities to make it easy to snooze an alarm or view your sleep cycle at a glance without unlocking your phone at night.

FITIV Pulse Heart Rate Monitor

This heart rate monitor app is for the most data-driven fitness junkies. They use Live Activities to help users track current reps, steps, and biometrics and view their current weekly progress at a glance. This accessible, real-time feedback serves as a powerful motivation tool and re-engagement driver.

Banking & Finance Apps Using Live Activities

Money Coach

Money Coach helps users keep track of their financial accounts and spending, set goals and budgets, and enhance their financial knowledge. They’re using Live Activities to help users track their real-time spending against their budgets and spending history to enable more awareness, transparency, and accountability outside of the app.

Food & Drink

Coffee Book

This coffee app is for the home barista aficionados among us. The app helps users brew better coffee by figuring out the precise grind, temperature, timing, and more — made simple with Live Activities that help you pour with precision.

Pestle

Pestle is the Swiss army knife of recipe organizer apps. It helps users manage and discover new recipes, create meal plans, grocery shop with dynamic lists, and even cook by following real-time recipe instructions from their lock screen.

Graphics & Design

Lock Launcher

This custom home screen widget app wouldn't be complete without Live Activities.

Quickly & Easily Add Live Activities to Your App

OneSignal is designed to help you send notifications and seamlessly manage your user communication across every channel, including mobile push notifications, web push notifications, bulk SMS, in-app messaging, and email. Our platform is quick to set up and makes it easy to send eye-catching messages without doing any development work. We’re currently the only platform making Live Activities available to everybody.

If you don't have a OneSignal account, you can create one for free and implement Live Activities today. To unlock higher-volume access, upgrade your plan today. If you’re a scaled or rapidly growing app, reach out to our team of experts to get set up with the robust support you need on a custom plan that’s tailored to your budget and goals.