Hi everyone, we’d appreciate your input on the following use case – thanks in advance!
In our iPhone and Apple Watch app, we’re using the NearbyInteraction API to measure the distance between both devices via UWB.
Setup:
On the iPhone, we start a LiveActivity together with the NISession, to keep the ranging active in the background.
✅ Good news: On iOS 18.4, this works as expected – the NISession stays active in the background as long as the Live Activity is running.
Current issues:
As soon as the Watch app moves to the background, ranging seems to pause and is eventually terminated.
→ Question 1: Is there a way to keep the NISession active on the Watch when the app goes into the background?
Audio playback from background not working: We'd like to trigger audio playback when certain distance changes are detected. So far, we can only trigger haptic feedback in the background – audio does not play.
→ Question 2: Is it possible to play audio (e.g. using AVAudioPlayer) while a NISession and a LiveActivity are running in the background?
We’d be grateful for any advice or best practices for this combination. Thanks and best regards!