Live Activities
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Live Activities enable apps to display dynamic, real-time updates directly on glanceable areas like the Lock Screen, iPhone StandBy, Dynamic Island, and Apple Watch’s Smart Stack, allowing users to monitor ongoing events, activities, or tasks without constantly reopening the app.
Ideal for tracking short-to-medium-length tasks, Live Activities present prioritized information such as live sports scores, delivery updates, or fitness metrics, and can offer interactive options for user control. For best practices, ensure a concise layout suited to all display locations, avoid sensitive information, and refrain from using Live Activities for advertising, preserving them as a tool for useful, timely updates.
To facilitate this feature, Netmera has integrated additional functionalities into the existing message delivery framework specifically designed for Live Activity.
Ensure your Swift SDK version is at least 4.2.0
A p8 push certificate is required to enable Live Activity updates.
Starting with iOS 17.2, you can remotely initiate Live Activities via Netmera.
This guide outlines the steps to initiate, update, and end Live Activity with Netmera’s API, enabling dynamic notifications on iOS devices. Below are the essential setup instructions, endpoint examples, and details on how to manage the lifecycle of a Live Acxtivity.
You can find a sample project below, which you may use as a reference for your implementation.
Info.plist
for Live Activity SupportEnsure the following keys are added to your app’s Info.plist
ActivityAttributes
Each Live Activity must define its own custom ActivityAttributes
struct. For Netmera compatibility, it must conform to NetmeraLiveActivityAttributes
.
netmeraGroupId
is required and must be unique per activity. It allows Netmera to group and update the same activity across multiple users with a single request.
ActivityAttributes
defines both static and dynamic properties.
ContentState
holds the dynamic fields that can be updated.
Example:
Target Membership Requirement
The file defining the ActivityAttributes
struct (e.g., MatchScoreAttributes
) must be included in both the main app target (e.g., NetmeraLiveActivitySample
) and the widget extension target (e.g., NetmeraLiveActivitySampleWidget
).
In Xcode, select the file and verify under the File Inspector (right-hand panel) that both targets are checked in the Target Membership section.
Failing to configure this correctly will result in the widget extension being unable to access the ActivityAttributes
struct, causing a build error.
You can start an activity remotely or locally:
Remote: You must call the Netmera.register(forType:name:)
method early in your app’s lifecycle, before the push-to-start token is generated, then start an activity using the /rest/3.0/sendBulkNotification
endpoint.
Local: Create an instance of your Live Activity, then use the Netmera.observeActivity
method to let Netmera manage token and state updates of your activity.
To use remote Live Activity registration, iOS 17.2 or later is required.
To enable Live Activity tracking in iOS 17.2 and later, you must register the Live Activity type with Netmera. This allows Netmera to track and associate push tokens for the specified activity type.
Registration Method
Use the Netmera.register(forType:name:)
method to register your Live Activity type.
You can call this method:
Inside application(_:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:)
in your AppDelegate
, or
At an appropriate point in your app’s lifecycle before showing the Live Activity.
Example use case: When a user adds a team to favorites, you can register the related activity type in advance to prepare for future updates.
Example:
Once registered, Netmera begins listening for push tokens linked to this activity type.
You can trigger a Live Activity remotely on iOS devices using Netmera’s REST API. The example below demonstrates starting a Live Activity for tracking a football match score.
All fields in the liveActAttr
object are mandatory:
netmeraGroupId
homeTeamName
awayTeamName
homeTeamLogo
awayTeamLogo
If any of these fields (e.g., awayTeamLogo
) are missing, the request will fail, and the Live Activity will not be shown.
type
Must be "LIVE_ACTIVITY"
to activate the Live Activity feature.
contentState
Contains dynamic values that can be updated throughout the activity (e.g. score, match status).
liveActAttr
Contains static metadata used in the widget. All fields are required.
netmeraGroupId
A unique ID that groups the same activity across different users.
homeTeamName
Name of the home team to be displayed in the widget.
awayTeamName
Name of the away team to be displayed.
homeTeamLogo
Media identifier for the home team logo.
awayTeamLogo
Media identifier for the away team logo.
liveActAttrType
Must match the name of your ActivityAttributes
Swift class/struct.
sendToAll
Set to true
to broadcast the activity to all users. You can replace this with custom targeting if needed.
To ensure Netmera continues tracking Live Activities when the app is reopened:
If the app is terminated, its connection with the Live Activity is lost.
To resume tracking token updates or activity state changes, the existing Live Activity must be observed again when the app is relaunched.
This should be handled inside the application(_:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:)
method of your AppDelegate.
Doing so ensures that both locally and remotely started activities are properly re-observed on app launch.
Use the following method:
Example:
You can update the content of an ongoing Live Activity by sending a REST API request to Netmera:
To stop a Live Activity, send an END
action request via Netmera REST API:
You can stop tracking a specific Live Activity in your app by calling:
Important Notes:
The name
parameter must exactly match the identifier used during registration with Netmera.register(...)
.
If the names do not match exactly, the unregistration will not take effect.
Example use case: When a user removes a football match from their favorites and no longer wants updates on the lock screen or widget, call the unregister method.
You can stop tracking a specific Live Activity using the Netmera.unregister(name:)
method.
If you encounter the error:
It indicates that the netmeraGroupId
attribute is missing. Ensure it is correctly provided in your ActivityAttributes
structure.