Live Activities are a super useful feature of Apple’s latest iPhones, but also one that goes underused. Google Maps has been overdue to support the feature for years now and while it’s still not live yet, Google is testing Live Activities with some iPhone users.
On iOS, a Live Activity can offer data from an app which can be shown with priority on the lock screen and always-on display, as well as in the iPhone’s Dynamic Island. Live Activities can serve a number of use cases, with one example being how Uber and Lyft use the feature to show pickup and dropoff status.
Google has been teasing support for Live Activities in Maps since early 2023. It was last reported that Google was aiming to roll out the feature in time for iPhone 15, but that never happened.
When it was first announced, Google touted that “glanceable directions” would include information that was “previously only visible by unlocking your phone, opening the app and using comprehensive navigation mode.” The feature has been opt-in, and is already active on Android via normal system notifications. It’s only on iOS that the feature has yet to fully roll out, despite a setting in the app referring to “Glanceable directions while navigating.”
Lately, though, Google has been testing support for Live Activities with these glanceable directions on and off for some users.
Over the past two or three months, some lucky users have noticed Live Activities from Google Maps appearing on their iPhones when getting directions. This appears to work whether using public transit or normal in-car navigation, with Maps showing the destination and time of arrival as pictured below.
The feature, as expected, works on both the lock screen and the Dynamic Island.
We’ve spotted multiple reports on Reddit of Google testing the functionality, as well as another report today from Max Jambor on Twitter/X. It seems to be an extremely limited test, and at least one user who saw the test said it stopped working a few hours later.
It’s still unclear when Google intends to roll out support for Live Activities on Maps for iPhone, but the feature is certainly eagerly awaited, and long overdue.
If you’d like to try your luck in getting this going, open the Settings menu in Google Maps and toggle on “Glanceable directions while navigating.” This likely won’t result in Live Activities suddenly appearing, but it gives you a better shot in trying it out.
Have you seen Live Activities in action with Google Maps? Let us know in the comments.
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