Limitations
Apple enforces system budgets for Live Activities and widgets to preserve battery life and device performance. These limits are not officially documented in full and are dynamically adjusted based on factors such as battery level, thermal state, and Low Power Mode status.
Live Activities
Section titled “Live Activities”The following thresholds have been identified from device logs. Note that these are estimates and may vary across iOS versions:
- Started activity limit: A budget of 10 started Live Activities within a rolling window. In testing, we’ve seen the budget replenish by 1 every 15 minutes (on a fully charged device), but expect this to vary.
- Updates per activity: Up to 240 high-priority updates per activity. Aivi currently sends all updates as high priority to ensure timely delivery.
Widgets
Section titled “Widgets”Widgets are the persistent, best-effort layer, and iOS budgets them differently:
- Background delivery: Widget content pushes are delivered at background priority. iOS batches and defers them to save battery, so an update typically appears within minutes rather than seconds, occasionally longer in Low Power Mode or on a sleeping device. See the freshness model for what stays live on device between pushes.
- Reload budget: WidgetKit gives each widget a daily refresh budget: Apple’s guidance is roughly 40 to 70 reloads per day for a frequently viewed widget, further adjusted for battery and usage. Very frequent content pushes are throttled rather than displayed one by one, so design widgets around “latest known state”, not around a stream of updates.