Add bindings for ActivityKit

[thisisthekap]

With iOS 16.1, the new Dynamic Island available on iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max become accessible using ActivityKit (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/activitykit).

Therefore, supporting iOS 16.1 in Xamarin.iOS is very much appreciated.

[beeradmoore]

iOS 16.1 requires Xcode 14.1 (via xcodereleases).
Xamarin.iOS support for Xcode 14.1 is on its way as per @dalexsoto closing the Xcode 14.1 meta issue.

Not sure where it is, has not shown up in my updater yet. But it should be soon I guess.

As for ActivityKit, I don't see it on the binding page for Xcode 14.1 or 14.2. Not sure if I am looking at it wrong or if it isn't in the pipeline yet. I do see WidgetKit in there though, is ActivityKit a part of WidgetKit?

[thisisthekap]

@beeradmoore Thanks for pointing out! ActivityKit is in fact a separate framework, and not include to WidgetKit (just related for some use cases). I edited the description accordingly.

So basically this issue should be called "ActivityKit binding missing"?

[beeradmoore]

I think it probably should be renamed, but it could be best to see if the binding does exist in the upcoming Xamarin.iOS 16.1 release.

Or at least testing the pre-release in the first comment of that thread to see if it actually is missing.

[beeradmoore]

Xamarin.iOS 16.1.1.27 is now available through the Visual Studio for Mac updater.

EDIT: Does not look like ActivityKit made the cut. I tried to find Activity and ActivityState but intellisense couldn't find it. using ActivityKit; also had no results.

EDIT 2: Looking at this, does not appear Xamarin will get it due to the lack of support for SwiftUI. I don't know enough to know if that is the underlying issue or if it can be resolved.

[amirvenus]

I think the other issue is that I cannot currently deploy to a physical Apple TV device using the latest stable Xamarin.iOS installation. Simulators work fine though on Xcode 14.2 and tvOS 16.1.

However, when I run mlaunch:

warning HE0003: Could not load the framework 'DVTDeveloperModeHelper' (path: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/SharedFrameworks/DVTDeveloperModeHelper.framework/DVTDeveloperModeHelper): not found.

And this probably causes the deployment to get stuck indefinitely with this message:

Please connect the device 'LivingRoom'...

Even though IT IS CONNECTED via Xcode and I can deploy a native swift tvOS app just fine.

[beeradmoore]

@amirvenus can you file a new issue with as much information about that as possible as it isn't directly related to this issue and won't get any visibility buried in the comments.

[amirvenus]

I have done that, @beeradmoore

#17132

[rolfbjarne]

Support for iOS 16.1 in Xamarin.iOS was release some time ago: https://github.com/xamarin/xamarin-macios/releases/tag/xamarin-ios-16.1.1.28

[beeradmoore]

@rolfbjarne , user was trying to use ActivityKit which still appears missing from the bindings. Was that overlooked or is it not possible because of SwiftUI shenanigans?

[rolfbjarne]

@beeradmoore thanks for pointing that out, I got carried away by the title.

It seems ActivityKit is only available using Swift, and not Objective-C, which means we're unfortunately not able to create bindings at this moment.

As of today, the only way to use a swift library is via a proxy library, the general idea is described here learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/ios/platform/binding-swift basically you would need to expose the ActivityKit Apis you need via a Swift glue layer that exposes the method via the swift bridge header and then creating a C# binding project for this.

[beeradmoore]

Would having all bridging libraries already built/bound in a Xamarin.iOS/netX-ios be a possibility in the future?

[rolfbjarne]

@beeradmoore The plan is for us to eventually provide these bindings, but it's a lot of work, so I'm not sure when that might be.

[AgustinBonilla]

Hi @rolfbjarne , Is there any news about the ActivityKit binding for Xamarin.iOS? I need it to add Live Activities to my Xamarin Forms app.

[rolfbjarne]

Hi @rolfbjarne , Is there any news about the ActivityKit binding for Xamarin.iOS? I need it to add Live Activities to my Xamarin Forms app.

No news yet, and we won't get anything until at least .NET 9 (we've started looking into this internally, so maybe we'll have something for .NET 9, but no promises whatsoever).

[alfonsinmoi]

Hello @rolfbjarne , it is a very interesting update for new applications since it gives the user a real-time visualization of something that is happening with the app closed. It would be very interesting for tracking, delivery, fitness applications, etc.

Thank you for the effort you make.

[kimdohyung1]

Hello @rolfbjarne , it would be nice to be able to use ActivityKit in my Xamarin.iOS project. Do you know when the timeline is for .NET9?

[rolfbjarne]

@kimdohyung1 no timeline yet.

Note that it's still don't know if we'll have anything swift-related for .NET 9, much less a specific framework, and we probably won't know more until maybe summer next year.