- Apple News provides real-time US election updates through Live Activities
- The alerts appear on both the iPhone and Apple Watch
- You can enable the Live Activities lock screen widgets in Settings
It’s Election Day in the US and it’s clear from social media and conversations with our American colleagues that stress levels are at a fever pitch as they wait to see who will come out on top in the presidential race. But for people who don’t feel stressed enough yet, or those who really have no interest in sleeping tonight, Apple News can give iPhone and Apple Watch users real-time election updates through Live Activities.
Live Activities uses lock screen notifications, banners, and the Dynamic Island to display up-to-date information about a live event or activity, such as the score of a sports match, how far away your Uber driver is, or the results of the 2024 United States presidential election.
So if you enable it, you can spend your election night with a constant visual reminder of which candidate is ahead with a live election result – with the lock screen widget also giving you quick access to more in-depth election coverage.
Enable live activities
While they’re not for everyone, if you’re interested in enabling live activity reports for the US elections (or other events), here’s what you should do.
First, go to your iPhone’s Settings app, locate the “Face ID & Passcode” section, enter your passcode when prompted, and under the “Allow Access When Locked” subsection, enable Live Activities if it’s not already enabled. is the case. This will become the Live Activities lock screen widget.
Next, you’ll want to open Apple News on election night, then tap the “Follow the 2024 Elections Live” banner and turn on the Live Activity. The banner should appear on your homepage (perhaps under Top Stories) or you can find it by going to the ‘Elections 2024’ special coverage.
Phones without Dynamic Island (iPhone 14 and earlier, ignoring the iPhone 14 Pro) will still get the lock screen widget, but they won’t see the constant live count at the top of their screen. As for Apple Watch users, once you enable Live Activity, it should automatically appear on your smartwatch, provided it’s running watchOS 11.
It’s not yet known how long Apple News will keep the Live activity going, but it could be live for a while. Some presidential results were announced within hours, others took days as states solidified their scores for each candidate. If you want to turn it off at any point before the activity ends, just find the Apple News banner again and turn off the Live Activity by tapping it again.