Live Activity Action: Add a Button to Open a URL or Trigger a Webhook

Live Activities now support optional action button.

Use it when a long-running job should stay actionable while progress is visible on the Lock Screen.

Open the GitHub Action run for a deployment, open a runbook, or trigger a backend webhook to pause or retry work without having to search for the right link or dashboard first.

What’s new

• New optional action field on Live Activity start, update, and end requests.
• One button per Live Activity.
• Action type:
  • open_url: opens the provided HTTPS URL in the browser.
  • webhook: ActivitySmith backend calls the provided HTTPS webhook (GET or POST).
• Supported for both segmented_progress and progress Live Activities.

Open URL example

Use this to jump from the Live Activity straight into the deployment or CI page.

{
  "content_state": {
    "title": "Deploying payments-api",
    "subtitle": "Running database migrations",
    "number_of_steps": 5,
    "current_step": 3,
    "type": "segmented_progress"
  },
  "action": {
    "title": "Open Workflow",
    "type": "open_url",
    "url": "https://github.com/acme/payments-api/actions/runs/1234567890"
  }
}

Webhook example

Use this when the action should trigger backend behavior instead of opening a page.

{
  "content_state": {
    "title": "Reindexing product search",
    "subtitle": "Shard 7 of 12",
    "number_of_steps": 12,
    "current_step": 7,
    "type": "segmented_progress"
  },
  "action": {
    "title": "Pause Reindex",
    "type": "webhook",
    "url": "https://ops.example.com/hooks/search/reindex/pause",
    "method": "POST",
    "body": {
      "job_id": "reindex-2026-03-19",
      "requested_by": "activitysmith"
    }
  }
}

Good fits

• deployment progress: open the workflow, deployment page, PR, or incident runbook
• customer imports and backfills: pause the import or retry a failed batch
• search reindex jobs: pause the reindex from the Live Activity itself
• database backup or restore verification: open the runbook or trigger the next backend step

Availability

Available now across the API, SDKs, CLI, and GitHub Action.

This feature is available in the ActivitySmith iOS app version 1.4.0 and newer.