Sometimes it's great to pick up your phone, see exactly the information you want to see, and immediately put it away without unlocking it and risking getting sucked in. This is the idea behind Live Activities, an underutilized iOS feature that allows apps to show realtime updates on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island.
If you've ever listened to music, set a time, or hailed an Uber, you've seen a Live Activity—it's just a way to get passive updates about something that's happening, right on your Lock Screen. Live Activities are distinct from lock screen widgets, which show up in the tap half of the screen. They look more like an notification than a widget, and generally include some kind of realtime information.
Live Activities offer a great way to passively keep track of all kinds of information, from sports scores to the tide. Here are some of the best apps I could find that make use of this feature.
Get flight times from your airline or Flighty
When I'm running through the airport, the last thing I want to do is constantly unlock my phone to find information like the departure time and gate number.
Some airlines, including United in the U.S., offer the Live Activity functionality right in their apps. If your airline doesn't, though, you're not out of luck: the app Flighty offers a Live Activity that pulls in such information in real time. Even better: give the app access to your calendar and it will automatically pull any flights in your schedule, meaning you don't even have to open the app to see the Live Activity appear on your Lock Screen—it all happens automatically. No more trying to walk and scroll in search of your flight data. The main downside: it's not free. Subscriptions to Flightly start at $48/year, which is steep, but you get a couple of complimentary flights to try everything out before you commit.
Get sports scores from Apple TV or Sports Alerts
Sometimes you're actively watching the game, and sometimes you're doing something else while it happens. Live Activities are great for this: you can occasionally glance at your phone to see the score, along with a few other key stats, then get back to whatever you're doing. Apple offers Live Activities for a few sports in the Apple TV app (I do not know why you can't access them from the new Apple Sports app—hopefully that's coming). Apple TV only offers live activities for the NBA, MLB, and MLS, along with a few European sports leagues.
If you want football and hockey scores, though, or simply like to have all of your scores in one place, check out Sports Alerts. This free app offers scores for way more leagues than Apple Sports, including women's leagues, and you can get a live activity for any game that offers a score. The only downside to both this and Apple TV's offering is that there's no way to automatically launch the activity when a team you follow plays a game—you have to go into the app and start the activity manually.
Get live tide updates with Tide Charts
Whether you live near the ocean or just visit sometimes, it's important to know what the tide is doing. The application Tide Charts tells you exactly that, giving you a quick way to check out the tide without having to fully open your phone. Unfortunately, the Live Activity isn't currently offered in the free version of the app. The full version costs $30 a year, which is probably only worth it if you depend on tracking the tide for your job.
Get election results from Apple News
It's an election year. For some people, the healthiest thing to do is to wait until the day after to find out who won (if we're lucky). If you can't make yourself do that, but also don't want to endlessly hit "refresh" on the results page, consider using a Live Activity via Apple News. If there's an election happening—including any of the upcoming primaries—you can turn on live updates and see the results on your Lock Screen as they come in. I tried this out during the South Carolina primary, and it works well.
How to enable Live Activities on your iPhone
If you want to start using Live Activities on your iPhone, you'll need to make sure you have them turned on first. Here's how to do that (provided you're using iOS 16.1 or later):
Open the Settings app
Scroll down to Face ID & Passcode
Scroll down until you see the subsection "Allow access when locked" and make sure the slider next to Live Activities is showing green.