iOS 16 beta 4 is the primary SDK launch that helps Reside Actions. A Reside Exercise is a widget-like view an app can place in your lock display and replace in actual time. Examples the place this may be helpful embrace reside sports activities scores or practice departure instances.
These are my notes on enjoying with the API and implementing my first Reside Exercise.
A motorcycle laptop in your lock display
My Reside Exercise is a show for a motorcycle laptop that I’ve been growing with a bunch a buddies. Right here’s a video of it in motion:
And right here with simulated information:
I haven’t talked a lot about our bike laptop venture publicly but; that may hopefully change sometime. Briefly, a bunch of buddies and I designed a little bit field that connects to your bike’s hub dynamo, measures pace and distance, and sends the information by way of Bluetooth to an iOS app. The app data all of your rides and also can act as a reside speedometer when mounted in your bike’s handlebar. It’s this final function that I wished to copy within the Reside Exercise.
Observe Apple’s information
Including a Reside Exercise to the app wasn’t onerous. I discovered Apple’s information Displaying reside information on the Lock Display screen with Reside Actions simple to observe and fairly complete.
No express consumer approval
iOS doesn’t ask the consumer for approval when an app desires to point out a Reside Exercise. I discovered this odd because it appears to ask builders to abuse the function, however perhaps it’s OK due to the foreground requirement (see under). Plus, customers can disallow Reside Actions on a per-app foundation in Settings.
Customers can dismiss an lively Reside Exercise from the lock display by swiping (like a notification).
Most apps will most likely must ask the consumer for notification permissions to replace their Reside Actions.
The app should be within the foreground to start out an exercise
To start out a Reside Exercise, an app should be open within the foreground. This isn’t supreme for the bike laptop as a result of the speedometer can’t seem magically on the lock display when the consumer begins using (regardless that iOS wakes up the app within the background at this level to ship the Bluetooth occasions from the bike). The consumer has to open the app manually no less than as soon as.
Alternatively, this limitation is probably not a problem for many use instances and can most likely lower down on spamming/abuse considerably.
The app should maintain operating within the background to replace the exercise (or use push notifications)
So long as the app retains operating (within the foreground or background), it might probably replace the Reside Exercise as typically because it desires (I feel). That is supreme for the bike laptop because the app retains operating within the background processing Bluetooth occasions whereas the bike is in movement. I assume the identical applies to different apps that may stay alive within the background, reminiscent of audio gamers or navigation apps doing steady location monitoring.
Updating the Reside Exercise as soon as per second was no drawback in my testing, and I didn’t expertise any charge limiting.
Most apps get suspended within the background, nevertheless. They need to use push notifications to replace their Reside Exercise (or background duties or another mechanism to have the system wake you up). Apple launched a brand new type of push notification that’s delivered on to the Reside Exercise, bypassing the app altogether. I haven’t performed with push notification updates, so I don’t know the advantages of utilizing this technique over sending a silent push notification to wake the app and updating the Reside Exercise from there. In all probability much less aggressive charge limiting?
Lock display coloration matching
I haven’t discovered a great way to match my Reside Exercise’s colours to the present system colours on the lock display. By default, textual content in a Reside Exercise is black in mild mode, whereas the built-in lock display themes appear to favor white or different mild textual content colours. If there may be an API or surroundings worth that permits apps to match the colour fashion of the present lock display, I haven’t discovered it. I experimented with numerous foreground kinds, reminiscent of supplies, with out success.
I ended up hardcoding the foreground coloration, however I’m not happy with the consequence. Relying on the consumer’s lock display theme, the Reside Exercise can look misplaced.
Animations can’t be disabled
Apple’s information clearly states that builders have little management over animations in a Reside Exercise:
Animate content material updates
Whenever you outline the consumer interface of your Reside Exercise, the system ignores any animation modifiers — for instance,
withAnimation(_:_:)andanimation(_:worth:)— and makes use of the system’s animation timing as a substitute. Nevertheless, the system performs some animation when the dynamic content material of the Reside Exercise adjustments. Textual content views animate content material adjustments with blurred content material transitions, and the system animates content material transitions for photos and SF Symbols. If you happen to add or take away views from the consumer interface based mostly on content material or state adjustments, views fade out and in. Use the next view transitions to configure these built-in transitions:opacity,transfer(edge:),slide,push(from:), or combos of them. Moreover, request animations for timer textual content withnumericText(countsDown:).
It makes complete sense to me that Apple doesn’t need builders to go loopy with animations on the lock display, and maybe having full management over animations additionally makes it simpler for Apple to combine Reside Actions into the always-on show that’s most likely approaching the following iPhone.
What shocked me is that I couldn’t discover a solution to disable the textual content change animations altogether. I discover the blurred textual content transitions for the massive pace worth fairly distracting and I feel this label would look higher with none animations. However no mixture of .animation(nil), .contentTransition(.id), and .transition(.id) would do that.
A Reside Exercise could be very very similar to a widget: the UI should reside in your app’s widget extension. You begin the Reside Exercise with code that runs in your app, although. Each targets (the app and the widget extension) want entry to a typical information sort that represents the information the widget shows. You must have a 3rd goal (a framework or SwiftPM package deal) that incorporates such shared sorts and APIs and that the downstream targets import.
Availability annotations
WidgetBundle apparently doesn’t help widgets with completely different minimal deployment targets. In case your widget extension has a deployment goal of iOS 14 or 15 for an current widget and also you now wish to add a Reside Exercise, I’d anticipate your widget bundle to appear to be this:
@predominant
struct MyWidgets: WidgetBundle {
var physique: some Widget {
MyNormalWidget()
// Error: Closure containing management circulation assertion can not
// be used with consequence builder 'WidgetBundleBuilder'
if #obtainable(iOSApplicationExtension 16.0, *) {
MyLiveActivityWidget()
}
}
}
However this doesn’t compile as a result of the consequence builder sort utilized by WidgetBundle doesn’t help availability situations. I hope Apple fixes this.
This wasn’t an issue for me as a result of our app didn’t have any widgets till now, so I simply set the deployment goal of the widget extension to iOS 16.0. In case you have current widgets and may’t require iOS 16 but, a workaround is so as to add a second widget extension goal only for the Reside Exercise. I haven’t tried this, however WidgetKit explicitly helps having a number of widget extensions, so it ought to work:
Sometimes, you embrace all of your widgets in a single widget extension, though your app can include a number of extensions.
