---
title: ActivityKit
framework: ActivityKit
role: collection
role_heading: Framework
platforms: [iOS 16.1+, iPadOS 16.1+, Mac Catalyst 16.1+]
path: activitykit
---

# ActivityKit

Share live updates from your app as Live Activities on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and the Mac.

## Overview

Overview With the ActivityKit framework, you can start a Live Activity to share live updates from your app. Live Activities offer a rich, interactive, and highly glanceable way for people to keep track of an event or activity over several hours, especially for apps that push the limit of notifications to provide updated information. For example, a sports app might start a Live Activity that makes live information available at a glance for the duration of a game. A Live Activity appears in highly visible contexts: On iPad and iPhone, it appears on the Lock Screen, in the Dynamic Island, and on the Home Screen. On Apple Watch, it appears in the Smart Stack. On Mac, it appears in the Menu bar. In CarPlay, it appears on the Home Screen. In addition to viewing real-time information, people perform essential functionality without launching your app using buttons or toggles included in a Live Activity layout or tap the Live Activity to launch the app to a scene that matches the activity’s content.

In your app, use ActivityKit to configure, start, update, and end the Live Activity, and create the user interface of your Live Activities with a widget extension, WidgetKit, and SwiftUI. By using SwiftUI and WidgetKit, you can share code between widgets and Live Activities or develop them in tandem. However, Live Activities use a different mechanism to receive updates compared to widgets. Instead of using a timeline mechanism, Live Activities receive updated data from your app with ActivityKit and from your server with ActivityKit push notifications, and you can start Live Activities with ActivityKit push notifications. note: visionOS doesn’t support Live Activities. Requests to start a Live Activity from a compatible iPad or iPhone app fail.

## Topics

### Essentials

- [Developing a WidgetKit strategy](widgetkit/developing-a-widgetkit-strategy.md)
- [ActivityKit updates](updates/activitykit.md)

### Starting a Live Activity

- [Displaying live data with Live Activities](activitykit/displaying-live-data-with-live-activities.md)
- [Starting and updating Live Activities with ActivityKit push notifications](activitykit/starting-and-updating-live-activities-with-activitykit-push-notifications.md)
- [Activity](activitykit/activity.md)
- [Emoji Rangers: Supporting Live Activities, interactivity, and animations](widgetkit/emoji-rangers-supporting-live-activities-interactivity-and-animations.md)
- [NSSupportsLiveActivities](bundleresources/information-property-list/nssupportsliveactivities.md)
- [NSSupportsLiveActivitiesFrequentUpdates](bundleresources/information-property-list/nssupportsliveactivitiesfrequentupdates.md)

### User interface

- [Creating custom views for Live Activities](activitykit/creating-custom-views-for-live-activities.md)
- [Adding accessible descriptions to widgets and Live Activities](activitykit/adding-accessible-descriptions-to-widgets-and-live-activities.md)
- [Launching your app from a Live Activity](activitykit/launching-your-app-from-a-live-activity.md)

### Widget ecosystem

- [Creating a widget extension](widgetkit/creating-a-widget-extension.md)
- [Animating data updates in widgets and Live Activities](widgetkit/animating-data-updates-in-widgets-and-live-activities.md)
- [Creating views for widgets, Live Activities, and watch complications](widgetkit/creating-views-for-widgets-live-activities-and-watch-complications.md)
- [Linking to specific app scenes from your widget or Live Activity](widgetkit/linking-to-specific-app-scenes-from-your-widget-or-live-activity.md)
- [WidgetKit](widgetkit.md)