Live Activities overview

Live Activities show a card on your customer's iPhone Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island that follows an event as it happens — for example, an order on its way, an offer counting down, or a match in progress. The card refreshes in real time, so customers can follow along at a glance without opening your app.

Live Activities suit events that play out over minutes or hours and have a clear beginning and end.

What your customers see

Where the card appears depends on the customer's iPhone and what they are doing at the time:

• Lock Screen — a card showing whatever your app is built to display, such as a status line, a progress bar, or a countdown.
• Dynamic Island — a compact summary that stays visible at the top of the screen while the customer uses their phone. Touching and holding it expands the view.

Your development team designs the card and builds it into your app. Blueshift sends the content that appears inside it.

How it works

You start an activity for a customer when the event begins, send updates as it progresses, and end it once the event is complete.

Updates change the card in place rather than sending a fresh notification each time, so customers see the latest state without a stream of alerts building up. When something significant changes, you can show a banner alongside the update.

What you need

• Live Activities built into your iOS app and integrated with the Blueshift SDK
• Token-based (.p8) authentication on your Blueshift push adapter
• Customers running iOS 17.2 or later

Live Activities are triggered through the Blueshift API rather than through campaigns or templates. Your backend systems start, update, and end each activity as the event unfolds.

What you can see in Blueshift

Once a customer's device registers, their profile shows its Live Activity details. Open the customer profile and expand the device row to see:

• enable_live_activity — whether Live Activities are enabled on the device
• live_activity_start_token — the token that lets Blueshift start an activity on the device
• live_activity_start_token_updated_at — when the device last registered
• live_activity_types — the activity designs the device registered for

The customer's Activity tab logs a live_activity_start event each time an activity starts for them.

Get started

Setup happens in your app and through the Blueshift API:

• Set up Live Activities — SDK integration, limits, and implementation notes
• Start a Live Activity — API reference
• Update a Live Activity — API reference