Live Activities let apps display real-time information, such as delivery progress or live sports scores, directly on users’ screens.
Traditionally, updating a Live Activity required sending a push notification to each individual Live Activity token. Broadcast Notifications replace this by letting your backend send a single push notification to a channel, which APNs automatically delivers to every subscribed Live Activity. This significantly simplifies the direct integration of Live Activities for app developers.
Batch Solution Experts can help customers implementing Live Activities the best way. Reach out to your CSM or Account Manager to learn more.
Here’s how it works:
Your backend creates a channel using Apple’s server-to-server API. A channel represents a logical group of Live Activities for the same event (for example, a delivery or a football match). Apple returns a unique channel ID, such as /xVpH==.
For testing purposes, channels can also be created from Apple’s Developer Portal.
Your backend shares the channel ID with your app. When starting a Live Activity, the app passes this channel ID to iOS. The app does not need to upload or manage Live Activity push tokens—iOS handles the subscription automatically.
Whenever the Live Activity needs to be updated, your backend sends a single broadcast notification to APNs targeting the channel ID. APNs then delivers the update to every device subscribed to that channel.
Developers should delete channels that are no longer needed, as Apple enforces limits on the number of active channels.
Some useful links:
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