Apple has updated its Developer Program License Agreement with new rules for how third-party accessories should handle forwarded notifications and live activities. Here are the details.
A little context
Today we reported on the new code introduced in iOS 26.5 beta 1 that pointed to the upcoming Live activity support for third party accessories in the EU.
In conjunction with the notification forwarding featurewhich will allow third-party accessories to display iPhone notifications, this will be exclusive to EU users as part of the interoperability requirements of the Digital Markets Act.
Last year he published a statement in its newsroom, arguing that the DMA would not only cause delays in the rollout of new features in Europe, but would also introduce “new threats to privacy and security.” Here’s Apple:
“The DMA also allows other companies to request access to user data and the core technologies of Apple products. Apple must comply with almost all requests, even if they create serious risks for our users.
So far, companies have filed requests to obtain some of the most sensitive data from a user’s iPhone. The most worrying ones include:
The full content of a user’s notifications: This data includes the content of a user’s messages, emails, medical alerts, and any other notifications. And it would reveal data to other companies that currently not even Apple can access.”
In other words, Apple argued that while it designed iOS to not be able to access the content of notifications, the same would not be true for third-party devices if that data needed to be opened to them.
As of today, that argument has not prevailed and Apple is working to open this access as required by the DMA.
Apple announces strict rules for notifications and forwarding of live activities
Tonight, Apple updated your Developer Program License Agreement with, among other things, a new section: 3.3.3 (J), Accessory Notification Framework and Accessory Live Activity Framework.
In it, Apple states that third parties “may not use the Forwarding Information for advertising, profiling, training models, or location monitoring,” nor may they “disseminate the Forwarding Information to any other Application or any other device” other than the third-party accessory that the user has configured to receive such information.
The terms also state that:
- Accessories cannot share this data, or the encryption keys linked to it, with any other device, including the user’s own iPhone.
- Nor can they change the content in a way that alters its meaning, beyond what is necessary to display it appropriately.
- Developers are prohibited from storing this data remotely, such as on cloud servers, except when strictly necessary to deliver it to the accessory.
- Data can only be decrypted on the accessory itself and nowhere else.
Finally, Apple reminds developers that apps do not need to be compatible with the system for their data to be shared with third-party accessories, as this will be controlled by a user level configuration.
To read Apple’s updated Developer Program License Agreement, follow this link.
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