App Intents are Limited to Thirty Seconds: Extend Execution as Live Activity with LongRunningIntent

In the WWDC 26 session “Discover new capabilities in the App Intents framework,” App Intents Engineer Moe Mehrabi covered improvements coming to intents that need to run beyond the 30-second limit – with LongRunningIntent:

Everything we’ve covered so far makes your entities and parameters more expressive and efficient. Now, let’s talk about execution.

When your intent runs – from Siri, Shortcuts, or any system surface – it only has 30 seconds to finish. That works for most everyday actions, but not every intent is that quick.

Now that my app supports tagging and organizing photos…

…I wanted to let people share their travel photos – uploading them to a shared album without opening the app.

So I created an upload intent and added a button to my widget to trigger it.

But with large photos, the upload takes time – and the intent kept failing because it couldn’t finish within the 30-second limit.

LongRunningIntent fixes this. It lets your intent run beyond the 30-second limit – and manages the background task lifecycle of your app.

And as your intent runs, progress updates appear automatically as a Live Activity.

Now, let’s check out the code.

Here’s the intent I wrote to upload my photos.

I’m conforming to LongRunningIntent.

I take a photo file as input.

Then, I wrap my work in performBackgroundTask for extended execution.

LongRunnningIntent requires the intent to report progress, so the system knows it’s still working and hasn’t stalled. And because it builds on ProgressReportingIntent, I get a built-in progress object to track my work.

I calculate the number of chunks for the file…

…and set the total count.

Then, upload each chunk…

…and update the progress as I go.

Here’s what happens when my intent runs. It can run longer and there’s a stop button right on the Live Activity, so the person can cancel it at anytime.

Though, it’d be great if my intent got a heads-up before being stopped.

CancellableIntent lets your intent clean up gracefully when cancelled – whether the person tapped cancel, the system timed out, or needed to reclaim resources.

Here’s how I can add cancellation support.

I add CancellableIntent…

…and implement the onCancel handler. When cancellation reason happens, handler gives me the reason…

…and I can use it to clean up partial uploads or cancel in-flight requests.

LongRunningIntent also supports background GPU access on supported devices for tasks like photo processing or on-device inference. Just make sure to add GPU access to your app’s entitlement.

To learn more about the mechanics of running tasks in the background, check out the session Finish tasks in the background from WWDC25.

As tasks being handled by App Intents become more and more complex, LongRunningIntent will be helpful in making things run smoothly for developers and users. Plus, it’s especially helpful for agents to finish their responses – like Codex for iOS’ release today.

Watch the full segment on YouTube and check out the Apple Developer documentation on LongRunningIntent, as well as ProgressReportingIntent and Finish tasks in the background.

P.S. If you’re looking for help with your App Intents integration, you can always hire me as a consultant.