Workout Live Activity

The Workout Live Activity puts the current workout on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island for as long as a session is running. It answers one question at a glance — what am I lifting next, and how much rest is left — so the phone can stay in a pocket, on a bench, or on a music screen without the workout disappearing from view.

Available on iOS 16.2 and newer. The Dynamic Island presentations require an iPhone 14 Pro or newer; every device gets the Lock Screen card. Interactive buttons require iOS 17.

Like everything else in Train Libre, this runs entirely on the device. Live Activities are commonly driven by remote push notifications; this one never is. There is no server, no APNs certificate and no network round-trip — the app updates the card directly, and the system animates the timers on its own.

What it shows#

The card always carries the same four pieces of information:

[icon]  Push Day                                          17:06
        Bench Press                                 Set 3 of 5
        W  72.5 kg  ×  8 reps  (RIR 2)                     [✓]

• Header — routine name and the elapsed workout duration, counting up on its own.
• Exercise and position — which exercise, and where in it you are.
• The set — set type, weight, reps and RIR, led by a coloured set-type badge.
• The checkmark — completes the set with the values shown.

The set-type badge uses the same letters and colours as the app's own set rows: W warm-up in orange, F failure in red, D drop set in blue, S superset and O other in neutral grey. Normal working sets show N — the position is already spelled out as "Set 3 of 5" beside it, so repeating the number would add nothing.

While a rest timer runs, a control row appears beneath the set:

        [ −15s ]        1:07        [ +15s ]        [ Skip ]

When there are no sets left the card offers Add exercise; if a workout is running with no exercises at all, it offers Open app. The workout is never finished from the card — that stays a deliberate action inside the app.

Cardio#

Cardio sets use the same card with different numbers: duration, distance and RPE instead of weight, reps and RIR, separated by · instead of ×, and without a set-type badge.

        Treadmill                                   Set 1 of 1
        20:00  ·  5.00 km  (RPE 7)                         [✓]

Routines currently store no target duration or distance for cardio, so a cardio set shows values only once they have been entered. Until then the line reads – and the set cannot be completed from the card.

The four surfaces#

Which of the compact and minimal forms you see is decided by iOS, not by the app. When a second Live Activity is on screen — a music player, a timer — both are reduced to their minimal circle. Because that circle is then the only place the set appears at all, it shows the numbers rather than the app icon.

Interactions#

The buttons work while the app is closed. They run in the widget's own process, which has no access to the app's database — so a completed set is recorded as a pending command in the shared App Group and applied by the app the next time it runs. Because of that, the checkmark also brings the app to the foreground; the timer buttons do not need to.

A set with missing values cannot be completed from the card. If weight or reps are unknown, the checkmark is grey and inert, and tapping it opens the app instead. Missing numbers are shown as –; nothing is ever filled in from the plan or guessed.

The rest timer#

The rest countdown is the part of the card people look at most, and the part with the most subtlety behind it.

It never stops. The number counts down to zero and then keeps counting up, so an overdue pause shows how long it has been overdue rather than sitting frozen at 0:00.

The field turns red the moment the pause ends — not a second later. This matters more than it sounds: a Live Activity cannot change its own layout, text or colour while the app is asleep. Only a handful of system-drawn views update on their own, and the red backdrop is built from one of them, so it flips exactly on time without the app being woken at all.

The sound is what actually reaches you when the phone is in a pocket and music is playing. It is scheduled ahead of time and moves along when the pause is changed from the card, so +15s really does mean fifteen seconds more. While the card is visible, the app does not additionally post a banner — the card already says it.

Behaviour worth knowing#

• The Live Activity ends when the workout is finished or discarded. A workout left over from a crash or force quit is cleaned up when the next one starts.
• iOS ends Live Activities after about eight hours and removes them from the Lock Screen after twelve. A very long session will lose the card before the workout ends.
• If Live Activities are switched off in Settings, the workout is unaffected; the card simply never appears.
• Editing the workout in the app — adding, removing or reordering sets and exercises — is reflected on the card immediately.
• Text is fully localized (DE, EN, FR, IT, JA) and follows the chosen unit system, including lbs and miles.

How it fits together#

Everything the card displays is prepared in Dart and handed over ready to draw: numbers already formatted, units already converted, words already translated, badge colours already resolved. The Swift side formats nothing — it lays out strings it does not interpret. That keeps a single source of truth for how a set is written, shared with the rest of the app.

Times are the exception, and deliberately so: they cross over as absolute dates rather than counters, which lets the system animate them without an update every second. A running workout needs roughly one update per set.

Known limits#

• Android is not covered. Live Activities are an iOS feature; the equivalent there is a foreground-service notification and has not been built.
• Cardio targets do not exist yet. Routines store no planned duration or distance, so cardio sets stay empty until values are entered.
• The numbers cannot be edited from the card. Weight and reps are shown as planned; changing them means opening the app.