Live heart rate on the iPhone Lock Screen

By Andreas B. Diendorfer · ORCID · LinkedIn · Updated 28 October 2026

What iOS does by itself

During a workout, the Fitness app shows heart rate for sources that feed it, such as AirPods Pro 3. Neither puts a running number under your thumb while you are in another app.

What a Live Activity is

A Live Activity is a card an app keeps updating on the Lock Screen and, on iPhones that have one, in the Dynamic Island. The app has to build it. Nothing on the phone turns heart rate into one for you.

Widgets are different. They refresh on a budget the system sets, so they are never live. Beatcast's home screen widgets show the last reading with the time it was taken, and your last session.

What you need

• iOS 26 or later.
• Live Activities allowed for the app, under the app's own settings in the Settings app. If they are off, Beatcast says "Turn on Live Activities to see a session on the Lock Screen" and the session runs without one.
• A sensor sending a reading. With a strap, arm band or broadcasting watch, the session keeps recording after you leave the app.

What you see

• Dynamic Island, closed: the reading, in the colour of your zone.
• Dynamic Island, held open: zone, trend, elapsed time and a pause button.
• Lock Screen: the whole card, without unlocking anything.

On an iPhone without a Dynamic Island, the same card appears on the Lock Screen. On iPhone, the card can also carry a small graph of the session. It is off by default. Switch on Graph on the Lock Screen in Settings.

Glance, do not unlock.

A long session

iOS stops updating a Live Activity after eight hours. Beatcast ends its card and starts a fresh one before that, so a long session keeps a card. When the session ends, the card stays on the Lock Screen as a summary for up to five minutes, with the time stopped at the session's length. Discard the session and it goes at once.

While a session runs, its Live Activity can also appear in the Smart Stack on a paired Apple Watch. If you wear an Apple Watch, Beatcast on the watch shows the same reading while it is open there.

Make it readable

Put the phone face down on a bench and the number is still on the Lock Screen when you pick it up. Prop it up and the full-screen mode fills the display, readable from across the room. Two alerts can speak up when you go over or come back under a zone: a ceiling and a floor. Zone alerts add a cue when you enter a zone you picked. Each comes by sound, speech, taps or a notification.

Beatcast on the App Store. Fourteen days free, then one purchase.

Questions

Related

See also: Is there a live heart rate widget?, heart rate alerts.

Good to know

Beatcast is not a medical device. It is built for training and general wellbeing, and it cannot detect, diagnose, treat or monitor any condition. If something about your heart worries you, talk to a doctor rather than to an app.

The Bluetooth word mark is a registered trademark of Bluetooth SIG, Inc. Apple, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple Health, Dynamic Island, Lock Screen and StandBy are trademarks of Apple Inc. Powerbeats and Beats are trademarks of Beats Electronics, LLC. All other device and app names belong to their owners and are used only to say which sensors Beatcast can read. Beatcast is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or certified by any of them.

Got your device working? Report it in r/beatcast and it goes on the list.