How Moda's Live Activity Keeps You on Track

You’re 20 minutes into a practice drive. Your teen is behind the wheel, you’re in the passenger seat, and you want to check how long you’ve been going. The phone is locked. Now what?

You could unlock it, find the app, wait for it to load. But you’re supposed to be supervising. Your eyes should be on the road, not fumbling with an app.

This is the kind of small friction that makes logging hours annoying. Not the big stuff. The little interruptions that stack up over months of practice.

What a Live Activity Actually Is

If you’ve ever tracked a food delivery order or a sports score on your iPhone lock screen, you’ve seen a Live Activity. It’s a persistent widget that sits on your lock screen and in the Dynamic Island (that little pill shape at the top of newer iPhones). It updates in real time without you opening anything.

Apple introduced this in iOS 16.1, and it’s become the standard way apps show ongoing, time-sensitive info. No notifications to dismiss. No app-switching. Just a glance.

What Moda Shows During a Drive

When you start a driving session in Moda, a Live Activity appears automatically. Here’s what it displays:

• Elapsed time — a running clock so you always know how long you’ve been driving
• Session type — whether it’s a day or night session (Moda figures this out for you based on sunset and sunrise)
• Supervisor name — the licensed adult supervising the drive

On the lock screen, this shows up as a compact card. On phones with Dynamic Island, you get a minimal view when the island is collapsed, and a fuller view when you long-press it.

That’s it. No clutter. Just the three things you’d actually want to check mid-drive.

How to Start It

There’s no separate toggle or setting for the Live Activity. You don’t have to enable anything.

Open Moda. Tap Start on the dashboard. Pick your supervisor. That’s it. The Live Activity shows up on its own. When you end the session, it goes away.

If you’ve disabled Live Activities for Moda in your iPhone’s settings, you’ll need to turn them back on. Go to Settings > Moda > Live Activities and make sure it’s enabled. But by default, it just works.

Why This Matters More Than It Sounds

Practice driving is a months-long process. Most families are logging 40 to 70 hours over 6 to 12 months. That’s dozens and dozens of individual drives.

Every time you have to open an app to check your progress, that’s a distraction. It’s small, but it adds up. And there’s a real safety angle here. The supervising adult shouldn’t be navigating an app while their teen is driving.

A Live Activity removes that entirely. You glance at your phone the same way you’d glance at a clock on the wall. Elapsed time, session type, supervisor. Done.

It Works in the Background

One worry people have with tracking apps: does it keep running if I switch to Maps or play music?

Yes. Moda’s session keeps going in the background. The Live Activity stays visible. You can use other apps, lock your phone, or ignore it completely. The timer doesn’t stop.

When the drive is over, open Moda and tap End Session. Your hours get logged, the Live Activity disappears, and you’re done.

A Small Thing That Makes a Big Difference

The Live Activity isn’t a flashy feature. It won’t show up in a bullet-point comparison chart. But after a few weeks of logging drives, you’ll notice you never wonder “wait, is the app still tracking?” You never have to dig through your phone mid-drive. You just glance and know.

That kind of quiet reliability is what makes the difference between an app you use for a week and one you actually stick with for the whole permit process.

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