Shipping iOS Live Activities with React: The Voltra Story

Name: Shipping iOS Live Activities with React: The Voltra Story
Start: 2026-04-23T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Florida, United States

Presented

React Miami

Speaker

Szymon Chmal

Software Developer

Callstack

Shipping Live Activities on iOS usually means crossing into Swift and SwiftUI. Voltra takes a different path.

In this talk, Szymon Chmal will walk through the design and implementation of Voltra, a library that lets teams build Live Activities and Dynamic Island views using React, without writing native Swift code.

The session will trace how Voltra came to life through a collaboration between Saul Sharma and Callstack, starting from an idea shared on social media and evolving into a working system that connects React with native iOS extensions.

Along the way, the team had to work within some of the tightest constraints on the platform. Szymon will dig into the constraints that shaped Voltra’s architecture. You’ll see how the renderer operates within iOS’s strict limits, including the 4KB state cap, and how server-driven UI makes it possible to update Live Activities without shipping new native implementations.

Join us for this technical walkthrough to discover how Voltra brings React to Live Activities and how you can benefit from it today.

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