Glossary
Live activity
A small, continuously updating piece of information shown in the pill.
What it means
A live activity is a miniature live view — a ticking clock, a countdown, a revenue total, audio EQ bars — rendered inside the resting pill. The term comes from Apple’s own vocabulary for the iPhone’s Dynamic Island and lock screen.
Why it matters
Live activities are the whole reason to own the notch space: information that updates itself without being asked. The moment you have to open something to refresh a number, the number may as well live in a browser tab.
How notchos does it
The clock, now playing with artwork and EQ bars, today’s revenue, live visitors, a countdown timer, battery, Claude tokens, a dot-matrix message, or the scratchpad — any tool can own the resting state, and the live strip can rotate several.
Fair questions
- Do live activities drain the battery?
- A ticking clock and EQ bars are trivially cheap to animate. The panel samples system stats only while it is open.
- Can more than one thing show at a time?
- One at a time by design, with an optional rotation — glanceability beats density.
Related terms
Twenty tools. One hover. $9.99, once.