New Template Ideas and More Control over Main Data Points for Live Activities

[tylerabate]

Hey! First off, seriously—thank you for building this app. I’d been Googling for something like it and couldn’t find anything close, so I literally signed up for your email list just to be notified when it launched. The second you said it was available, I grabbed it that day. It’s genuinely awesome.

Also random thought: you should totally hop on a Home Assistant podcast at some point and talk about it, because I think a lot of people in that community would be into this and don’t even realize it exists yet.

So here’s the idea I’ve been thinking about while using it: I’ve got like seven live activities running regularly and they all work great. And I’ve even been hacking around with ones that don’t really have a “set time” just to make them work anyway.

Example: I made one for my sauna—basically I want a live activity that tells me when it hits temperature. The only annoying part is it forces a time input, so I just set it to like an hour as a dummy value, but what I’m actually watching is the temperature rising until it hits the point I want. It works, but it feels like the progress bar/time concept is kind of the wrong model for a lot of these.

What would be so cool is if we had more customization options where the progress could be based on a value instead of time—like:
• pick a starting value (0%)
• pick a target value (100%)
• and then the progress bar moves based on the sensor value in between (like temperature, humidity, whatever)

So in my sauna case, say 80°F is 0% and 160°F is 100%, and it just fills as it heats up. That would make these “non-timer” live activities feel perfect instead of kinda forced.

And then the other bigger idea I had: is there any world where these live activity cards could also be integrated into Home Assistant itself? Like imagine being able to surface the same card on my HA dashboard and on my iPhone at the same time. I’d love to add conditions too—like show/hide these cards depending on what’s running. Then anyone looking at the HA dashboard can instantly see what’s active in a really clean way.

Also, one more thing I noticed: on iPhone Dynamic Island / Apple Watch, it usually defaults to showing “time left,” but sometimes that’s not the thing I care about. With the sauna, I care about the temperature, but the watch/island emphasizes time, and it doesn’t always show the detail I actually want at-a-glance.

So it’d be amazing if we could choose what the “primary” fields are—like what shows in the compact/dynamic island view and what shows in the watch glance view. Or even templates designed around these “progress by sensor value” type activities where the main data point is the value, not time.

Basically: if you added more template types (or a little more “define your own progress + primary fields” flexibility), I think people could hack this into a ton more live activities beyond timers, and it would unlock a whole new level of usefulness.

Anyway—sorry for the ramble, I just keep thinking about it because the app is already so good and feels super close to supporting these use cases naturally. Happy to test anything if you ever explore it.

[kjagiello]

Hi and thanks for your kind words! I'm very glad to hear you are finding Aivi useful!

I completely agree that the "generic" template needs more customizability. My current focus has been on a new template for use cases that don't have a fixed ETA or don't map naturally to a progress bar. Given your suggestions, I think you might find it relevant for at least some of your current use cases (perhaps the sauna temp!). You can find a sneak peek of that template and its capabilities in this GitHub discussion. It will be released as soon as I manage to get it through Apple's app review process 🤞

Once the template and some other requested features are out, I plan to revisit the generic template to make it more flexible, and I'll definitely take your ideas into consideration then.

And then the other bigger idea I had: is there any world where these live activity cards could also be integrated into Home Assistant itself? Like imagine being able to surface the same card on my HA dashboard and on my iPhone at the same time. I’d love to add conditions too—like show/hide these cards depending on what’s running. Then anyone looking at the HA dashboard can instantly see what’s active in a really clean way.

That's an interesting idea! I think it might be a bit of a hassle to have to maintain a web friendly mirror of all the activity templates, but if there is enough interest, I will definitely consider it.

Also, thanks for the tip on the Home Assistant podcast! I might reach out to them once I have made some more progress on the project and manage to cover more use cases.

Thanks again for the detailed feedback - it's incredibly helpful.

[tylerabate]

Seems like latest update of home assistant is causing multiple live activities to fire for the same slug. Then none of them work. Are you aware of anything?On Feb 25, 2026, at 3:49 PM, Krzysztof Jagiełło ***@***.***> wrote: Hi and thanks for your kind words! I'm very glad to hear you are finding Aivi useful! I completely agree that the "generic" template needs more customizability. My current focus has been on a new template for use cases that don't have a fixed ETA or don't map naturally to a progress bar. Given your suggestions, I think you might find it relevant for at least some of your current use cases (perhaps the sauna temp!). You can find a sneak peek of that template and its capabilities in this GitHub discussion. It will be released as soon as I manage to get it through Apple's app review process 🤞 Once the template and some other requested features are out, I plan to revisit the generic template to make it more flexible, and I'll definitely take your ideas into consideration then. And then the other bigger idea I had: is there any world where these live activity cards could also be integrated into Home Assistant itself? Like imagine being able to surface the same card on my HA dashboard and on my iPhone at the same time. I’d love to add conditions too—like show/hide these cards depending on what’s running. Then anyone looking at the HA dashboard can instantly see what’s active in a really clean way. That's an interesting idea! I think it might be a bit of a hassle to have to maintain a web friendly mirror of all the activity templates, but if there is enough interest, I will definitely consider it. Also, thanks for the tip on the Home Assistant podcast! I might reach out to them once I have made some more progress on the project and manage to cover more use cases. Thanks again for the detailed feedback - it's incredibly helpful. —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[kjagiello]

Sorry, I missed your response here. It was reported in multiple places (for example here) and was fixed. Feel free to let me know here in case you still experience issues.