Until now, the live activities displayed on the lock screen and in the dynamic island on the iPhone are updated every second. With iOS 18, which is expected to be released in September, the interval of the function that was once presented as a real-time display should now be longer. This could have a negative impact on some apps, as a developer has now made public.
Advertisement
The developer name is nico Posted on Xthat he was able to update his app’s live activities every second in iOS 17. The time has increased from 5 to 15 seconds since beta 7 of iOS 18. The developer initially thought it was a bug as Apple also noted live activities in the beta release notes regarding battery consumption. Live Activities were introduced by Apple with iOS 16.1.
“A gap in the API”
A query to developer support provided more details about the change. It said that every second update would also increase the wear and tear of NAND memory, as updates would have to be written there each time. With iOS 18 and watchOS 11, live activities are also displayed on the Apple Watch, making an additional synchronization step necessary.
According to the screenshot of the response posted by Niko, Apple makes it seem as though Live Activities were never intended to provide real-time experiences. The fact that this was possible was a “gap in the API” that is now being closed.
Which apps suffer from this and which don’t
But it’s not that simple: Apple itself explains it so far on its developer pagesThis function enables “a fitness app” that displays real-time data. Developer Nico did exactly that with his app, which transferred the speed of a bicycle speedometer in real time to an iPhone and a live activity display. He writes, “But knowing the speed 10 seconds ago does me no good.”
However, the change has no effect in other use cases that look like real-time displays – i.e. when the display can be calculated in advance. This applies, for example, to countdowns on timers. Here the timer runs within the live Activity. If changes over time are necessary, a longer interval is also sufficient to take these into account. This change will also be partially noticeable in the popular advertisements for sports results that some apps offer in live Activities, but this is not a fundamental obstacle in the case of fitness apps.
(MKI)
