Live Activities are coming to the Mac menu bar. Here is what I would do with my Mac app

Last week Apple put out the first macOS 27.3 beta, and the part I keep coming back to is small and sits at the top of the screen. MacRumors reports that macOS 27.3 brings Live Activities to the menu bar of Apple silicon Macs, not only to the new MacBook Pro with the Dynamic Island. And the line that matters for us: "Third-party Mac apps can also implement Live Activities support now."

If you make a Mac app that does anything that takes a while, this is a new place to show it. Here is what I found, and what I would do with it.

What actually changed

• The beta is out. Apple released the 27.3 betas for macOS, iOS, iPadOS and the rest on November 3, 2026, with Xcode 27.3. MacRumors says the public beta followed on November 5, and that the release is expected in December.
• Activities show up in the menu bar. Macworld describes them as small ovals to the left of your menu bar icons. On the new MacBook Pro they sit in the Dynamic Island instead.
• Only a few of Apple's apps use it so far. Music, Clock, Voice Memos and screen recording, per MacRumors.
• Before this, a Mac only mirrored your iPhone. MacRumors notes that macOS 26 and later already showed Live Activities from a nearby iPhone. What's new is that a Mac app can start its own.
• Apple's docs agree. The ActivityKit page now lists macOS 27.3 as a beta platform, and Apple's guide to displaying live data with Live Activities names the menu bar beside the Dynamic Island and CarPlay.

One thing the two reports don't agree on: MacRumors talks about Apple silicon Macs, and Macworld says "every Mac". Neither names Intel Macs. I'd treat Apple silicon as the safe assumption until Apple's release notes say otherwise.

Why a Mac app maker should care

The menu bar is the one spot on a Mac that is always on screen. Until now, the only way into it was your own menu bar icon, which people hide, or a notification, which disappears. A Live Activity is a third option: it shows up while something is happening and goes away when it's done.

That suits a lot of small Mac apps. An export that takes four minutes. A file upload. A Pomodoro timer. A build, a backup, a transcription, a download queue. Today most of those show a progress bar in a window that's hidden behind three others.

The limits, from Apple's guide

These are from Apple's ActivityKit guide, which is written mostly for iPhone. Some of it may work a little differently on the Mac, so test it.

• Eight hours at most. After that the system ends the activity. A backup that runs overnight needs a plan for that.
• 4 KB of data. The static and changing data together, including push updates, can't go over 4 KB. Send numbers and short labels, not lists.
• No network inside it. The activity runs in its own sandbox and can't fetch anything. Your app updates it with ActivityKit, or your server does with an ActivityKit push.
• It lives in your widget extension. The view is built with WidgetKit and SwiftUI. If you have no widget extension yet, you need one.
• Start it while your app is in front. The guide says you request an activity while the app is in the foreground.
• People can switch it off. They can turn off Live Activities for your app in Settings, and the system limits how many can run at once. So always handle the error and keep your normal progress view.

What I'd try this week

These are my own steps, not Apple's.

1. Pick the one thing. Find the single task in your app that people wait for. If there isn't one, skip this. A Live Activity for something that finishes in two seconds is noise.
2. Install the beta somewhere safe. A separate APFS volume or a spare Mac, not the Mac you ship from.
3. Build the smallest version. One activity, start and end, with a progress number. Look at it in the menu bar next to real icons, in light and dark mode. The compact view is tiny, so test it with your longest file name.
4. Keep it behind an availability check. Your app still has to run on macOS 26 and earlier, and on Macs where people turned activities off.
5. Check your Info.plist. On iPhone, an app declares Live Activities with the NSSupportsLiveActivities key. Apple's page for that key lists only iOS and iPadOS today, so check the 27.3 release notes before you assume the Mac needs it or ignores it. While you're in there, the new Info.plist explainer reads the whole file and tells you what each key does.
6. If you make a menu bar app, think twice. You already own a spot up there. An activity on top of your icon might be one thing too many. It suits apps that live in a window better.

What I wouldn't do

I wouldn't ship a Live Activity in a release build that requires the beta, and I wouldn't put "Live Activities on Mac" in a launch post until macOS 27.3 is out and I've seen it work on a Mac that isn't mine. I also wouldn't build one just because it's new. If people don't wait on your app, they won't miss it.

The MacPip angle

MacPip doesn't test whether an app supports Live Activities. Listings are scanned automatically when they're submitted, and a blue tick only means a person tried the app on a date. So if you add support, say so in your listing in plain words, with the macOS version it needs. The menu bar apps and developer tools categories are where I'd expect the first ones to show up.

New today: the Info.plist explainer. Paste your app's Info.plist, or what plutil -p prints, and it explains each key in plain words, checks your version numbers, minimum macOS, category and permission messages, and flags the ones App Review asks about. It runs on the page and nothing is sent. If you also ship updates with Sparkle, the appcast checker is next door. And if your Mac app isn't on MacPip yet, listing it is free.

Sources

• MacRumors: macOS 27.3 Brings Live Activities to Macs Without Dynamic Island
• Macworld: Live Activities in the menu bar on macOS 27.3 (November 5, 2026)
• Apple Developer News: Get ready with the latest beta releases
• Apple Developer Documentation: ActivityKit
• Apple Developer Documentation: Displaying live data with Live Activities
• Apple Developer Documentation: NSSupportsLiveActivities

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