I figured it out! After some further debugging I found that even when omitting the pushType the activity still wouldn't start on "older" devices. Then I stumbled across this sentence in the documentation of Activity.request(attributes:content:pushType:): "If your Live Activity displays image assets, the system requires them to use a resolution that’s smaller or equal to the size of the Live Activity presentation for a device. If you use an image asset that’s larger than the size of the Live Activity presentation, the system may fail to start the Live Activity. For information about the sizes of Live Activity presentations, see Human Interface Guidelines > Live Activities." So it turns out the problem was that I'm using 500x500 image assets in my Live Activities - which is just inside the range for iPhones 12 and up, but too large for iPhones older than that.

My understanding is that Apple intentionally limits control over timer text fields in order to implement always-on-display support for these. If you have an always-on-display, the OS will replace the seconds of the timer with dashes and only update the minutes while the device is locked. I also found no way of only displaying minutes.

Does anyone know whether there is a minimum device requirement for ActivityKit.pushTokenUpdates? I'm getting tokens fine on newer devices but not for older ones (i.e. iPhone XR, iPad 8th Generation)

I'm wondering the same thing: Currently implementing Live Activities for Football (Soccer) matches. A soccer match will have two or three match-time-based push updates per 45-minute-halftime (depending on the extra time given), then the same amount per 15-minute-overtime-halftimes. On top of that any number of goals can occur - especially after overtime when during a penalty shootout there's approximately 1 goal every 30-60 seconds - each requiring a push update. Every one of these push updates are crucial for the Live Activity (apns-priority 10) but does this already count as "requires frequent updates"? The documentation specifically mentions Basketball matches as requiring frequent updates, since they have a much higher scoring frequency than football - but how much is "too much" I wonder? If anyone can share insights on this it would be highly appreciated.

I got another answer on my feedback assistant (FB12136006) asking me to verify this issue with Xcode 15 beta. Has anyone tested this in Xcode 15 beta?

I actually got feedback from Apple via the feedback-assistant: They say "DRM content is not supported in Simulator and so it is expected to show blank screen." Very strange feedback, given that the same HLS-videos run perfectly fine on any other simlulator (below 16.4). Guess I’ll need to stick with a 16.2 simulator until the real issue gets fixed.

Opening the Simulator via the terminal with this command forces the use of x86_64 architecture/Rosetta arch -x86_64 /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Applications/Simulator.app/Contents/MacOS/Simulator Still, any update on this from Apple's side would be highly appreciated. We shouldn't still be required to "trick" the simulator into using the old architecture by now.