iOS silently drops Live Activity updates when per-device push budget runs out
iOS Live Activities, introduced in iOS 16.1, operate under a hidden per-device update budget that throttles or drops high-priority push notifications without throwing any errors. Updates sent with apns-priority 10 are delivered immediately but draw from this budget, which iOS recalculates based on battery level, thermal state, and recent update frequency. Sending rapid priority-10 updates — such as word-by-word text changes — can exhaust the budget in under a minute, causing the Lock Screen display to silently freeze. Apple enforces this limit to protect battery life, since Live Activities occupy system-managed surfaces like the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island. Developers can work around the constraint by sending a time window instead of frequent state changes, letting SwiftUI drive countdowns and progress bars entirely on-device without additional updates.
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