Quick answer
To see Claude Code status on your Lock Screen, you need a Live Activity, not just a notification. Turn on Live Activities (Settings → Face ID & Passcode → Live Activities, plus the per-app toggle), make sure the app that receives your Claude Code hooks is allowed to show them, and start a session. The card then sits on the Lock Screen and updates in place — running, needs-you, done — without unlocking your phone.
You start a long Claude Code task, put your phone face-up on the desk, and want to know its state at a glance — without a stream of banners and without unlocking anything. That's a Live Activity on the Lock Screen, and it's a different thing from a notification. This guide covers what shows up there, how to turn it on, and what to do when the card goes blank.
Lock Screen card vs. notification vs. Dynamic Island
These get conflated constantly, so it's worth being precise:
| | What it is | How long it lasts | |---|---|---| | Notification | A one-off banner ("agent finished") | Disappears after you glance at it | | Lock Screen Live Activity | A card that stays and updates in place | Persists through the session | | Dynamic Island | The compact pill version of that same Live Activity | Shows while the phone is unlocked and in use |
The key insight: the Lock Screen card and the Dynamic Island are the same Live Activity, just rendered differently depending on whether your phone is locked or in your hand. You don't set them up separately. If your phone has no Dynamic Island, the Live Activity simply lives on the Lock Screen — you lose nothing important.
A notification tells you something happened. A Live Activity tells you what's happening right now. For monitoring a running agent, you want the second one — a card you can read off a locked screen from across the desk.
Enable Live Activities (the toggles that matter)
Live Activities have their own switches, separate from standard notifications, which is why a banner can work while the Lock Screen stays empty. Turn them all on:
- Global switch: Settings → Face ID & Passcode → scroll to Live Activities and make sure it's on. (This also controls whether they appear on the Lock Screen while locked.)
- Per-app switch: open the settings for the app that receives your Claude Code status and confirm its Live Activities toggle is on.
- Notifications, too: the app should still be allowed to send notifications (Settings → Notifications), since the initial "session started" push is often what launches the Live Activity.
Once those are on, start a Claude Code session that pushes status through a hook. Within a second or two of the first update, the card appears near the bottom of the Lock Screen and refreshes as the agent moves between states.
What the card actually shows
A well-built Claude Code Live Activity uses the Lock Screen's space to answer the only question you care about mid-task: does this need me yet? Typically that's a status line (running / needs you / done), what it's waiting on (for example, a permission prompt like Allow: npm test?), and enough color to read it at a glance — no unlocking, no app-switching.
Stop babysitting your terminal
Agentfy pushes Claude Code status to your iPhone — Live Activities, Dynamic Island, and instant alerts.
StandBy: turn your phone into an ambient status display
If you charge your iPhone on its side (a stand, a dock), StandBy can promote Live Activities to a full-screen view. Prop the phone next to your keyboard and the Claude Code card becomes an ambient monitor — glance over, see the state, keep working. It's the same Live Activity under the hood, so if the Lock Screen card works, StandBy will show it when StandBy is active.
When the Lock Screen card is blank or stale
Work through these in order — it's almost always one of the first three:
- Live Activities are off. Re-check both the global switch (Face ID & Passcode) and the per-app toggle. This is the number-one cause of an empty Lock Screen while banners still arrive.
- A Focus mode is hiding it. Do Not Disturb, Sleep, or a Work Focus can suppress the card. Add the app to the Focus's allowed list.
- Updates aren't reaching the phone. If the card appears but never changes, the session's status pushes aren't getting through — the hook may not be firing, or the token may be stale. See Claude Code notifications not working for the full checklist.
- The activity expired. iOS ends Live Activities after several hours, and they don't survive a reboot. A marathon session can outlive its card; starting a fresh session brings it back.
Live Activities and standard notifications have independent toggles, so fixing one doesn't fix the other. If your banners work but the Lock Screen is blank, the problem is almost always the Live Activities switch — not your hooks.
How this fits together
The Lock Screen card is one face of Claude Code's Live Activity; the Dynamic Island is the other. If you want the full picture of how the persistent status works — including the Dynamic Island's compact and expanded states — read the companion guide below. And if you're just getting started, the iPhone pillar walks through the whole setup from zero.
Claude Code Live Activities & Dynamic Island
How the persistent status card works across the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island.
If you'd rather not wire this up by hand, Agentfy ships Live Activities out of the box (Pro) via an open-source Claude Code plugin that installs the hooks for you. See the Claude Code on the Lock Screen page for a quick overview.