Phones

iPhone 18 Pro's Third Live Activity Is System-Only

The Dynamic Island can show three activities, but one is reserved for system apps like Now Playing or navigation.

Ryan O'NeillPublished October 7, 2026 · 1 min read

The iPhone 18 Pro gets a smaller Dynamic Island cutout, and with that, room for three Live Activities side by side. But MacRumors reports there's a catch, based on code explored by pdfu.

The third slot isn't for your sports scores or delivery tracking. It's always a system activity — Now Playing, turn-by-turn navigation, that kind of thing. A third-party app can't claim it.

So if you've been wondering why you still only see two apps' Live Activities on the 18 Pro, now you know. iOS 27 reserves that extra space for Apple's own services.

About Ryan O'Neill

Ryan O'Neill writes Should I Upgrade? and the site's phone and laptop buying guides. He opened his own phone-repair shop in Salt Lake City in 2019 and has repaired or traded in about 15,000 devices since. He lives in Salt Lake City with his fiancée. He carries one iPhone and one Android phone, and keeps 40 older phones in a drawer for side-by-side tests.