iOS 18 is downgrading Live Activities widgets in one key way

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No more real-time updates

iOS Live Activities
Sports scores are among the information that can be shown in Live Activities (Image credit: Apple)

We're expecting both an iPhone 16 series unveiling and a full release of iOS 18 at Apple's September 9 event next week – and it looks like the new iPhone software is set to downgrade the functionality of Live Activities in one important way.

According to 9to5Mac, Apple is restricting the rate at which these widgets can refresh themselves – which is going to cause problems for apps that want to show real-time activity information, such as cycling speed as you've moving.

These Live Activities widgets were introduced with iOS 16 in 2022, and they work like enhanced notifications on the lock screen or in the Dynamic Island: they can keep you up to date with sports scores, for example, or the estimated arrival time of an approaching cab.

In feedback sent to one developer, Apple says Live Activities were "never intended to be used to create real-time experiences", despite a mention of real-time fitness metrics on the official Live Activities guide for iOS developers.

The write idea

Apple goes on to explain that each update from a Live Activities widget requires data to be written to the storage on the iPhone – which, if it's happening constantly, can contribute to wear and tear inside the handset.

What's more, with iOS 18, each of those updates needs to be synced to an Apple Watch, if one is connected. While the downgrade will disappoint some, it should improve battery life and the lifespan of the internal iPhone storage.

It seems that update intervals are now set at 5-15 seconds, though this won't affect anything with a timer (like a notification showing a delivery driver arrival time): in this case starting the timer is just one action, with no refreshes needed in order for the timer to count down.

Apple announced a wealth of new features that will be arriving with iOS 18 at its WWDC 2024 event in June, and next Monday the beta-testing process for the software should be coming to an end – which means it'll then be pushed out to all compatible iPhones.

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David Nield
David Nield
Freelance Contributor

Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.