Introduction
Add native Live Activities to any product from the web. No mobile development required!
Web Activities lets web developers tap into native phone functionality: live, glanceable surfaces on the user's phone, driven from a website or backend. The whole integration is a few HTTP calls and a launch link.
On iOS: Live Activities
A Live Activity is a live widget pinned to the Lock Screen, the Dynamic Island, and the Apple Watch Smart Stack. It shows the current state of something in motion (an order, a match, a countdown) and updates in place, without the user opening anything.
On Android: Live Updates
The same activity reaches Android phones as a Live Update: a persistent notification that updates in place instead of stacking. Two practical notes: Android users install the companion app (instant launch is iOS only), and only the Activity Progress layout is rendered today.
Some Use cases
These surfaces used to be reserved for companies with big native apps: Uber's ride tracker, DoorDash's order status, ESPN's live scores. Web Activities hands the same surface to anything a QR code or a link can reach, and that is where it gets interesting.
- A high school football game: a QR code at the gate puts the live score on every phone in the stands, with team history, fun facts, and paid shout-outs from students and parents between plays.
- A school fundraiser: parents watch the donation total climb toward the goal all week, right on the Lock Screen.
- Sports betting: the wager and the live line, pinned to the Lock Screen until the game settles.
- AI agents: a long-running agent reports each step to the phone as it works. Kick it off, pocket the phone.
- Internal team tooling: deploys, incidents, and queue depth on the team's phones, with no internal app to build or distribute.
