Possible to start a live activity on watchOS 11?

Question

shamanskyh OP

Created Jun ’24

Replies 4

Boosts 2

Participants 5

I'm excited to bring my Live Activity to Apple Watch via the .supplementalActivityFamilies([.small]) modifier.

However, I'm also wondering whether it is possible for my watchOS app, separately, to initiate a Live Activity and receive updates for it via push notification. From my testing it seems like no, but the function call itself can be made, since ActivityKit is available on watchOS.

Are there any other recommendations for how to go about initiating a Live Activity from a watchOS app? Would I have to communicate with a companion iOS app to start the Live Activity on the phone instead?

Boost

Answer 1

Frameworks Engineer OP

Apple

Jun ’24

Would love to know more about what you’re wanting to do here beyond the mechanics. While it’s technically possible to use WatchConnectivity to poke your iOS app to start a live activity that then gets forwarded back to the watch, it probably doesn't make sense to do so. Can you explain more about what your app is doing/what the person using your app might expect? A Feedback with the details of your use case would be welcome. Please post the number here!

2

Answer 2

shamanskyh OP

Jun ’24

Thank you so much! I wrote up my (admittedly niche) use case with FB14088124.

0

Answer 3

michaltuma OP

Aug ’24

In my app the use case is quite simple, users can start a timer, eg a meditation. On the iPhone, they see the elapsed time in Live Activity and are able to pause or stop it. So are there any recommendations directly from the watch without having to implement push notifications? Built-in apps like timer and stopwatch work like this. This API is not available for developers?

0

Answer 4

Narayana-M_7 OP

Aug ’24