Nowadays, nearly everyone has a smartphone, and it’s an integral part of people’s daily lives. If you want to use your phone to make your life easier, then stick around because in this video, we’re going to go through an application called Tasker, which will show you how to automate things using your phone.
For this one I highly recommend you want to video rather than reading the blog article!
The first thing you’ll need to do is go to the Google Play Store and download the app called Tasker. It does cost a few dollars, but I think you’ll find that by the end of this video, it’s worth that investment.
Once you’ve installed the Tasker application, open it up. When you open Tasker for the first time, you’ll see that tabs for profiles, tasks, scenes, and variables. Tasker often asks for permissions for various operations, such as access to Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, location, and accessibility features. These permissions are required for Tasker to perform its automation tasks.
Tasker allows you to automate various actions on your phone. While some advanced features may require root access or enabling through ADB, this video focuses on simpler automations that are still quite powerful. (Although the Home Assistant one is a bit more complex!)
Profiles are automations that are triggered by specific events, tasks are the actions executed when the event occurs. The events can include an application being opened, specific days, phone events, locations, states, and time.
One example automation is turning off the torch when charging. To create this profile, you would select the “State” option, then “Power,” and choose the charging source (AC, USB, or Wireless). Then, you create a task to turn off the torch.
Another example is showing a pop-up on the screen when the battery level is low. You can create a profile based on the battery level and set the desired range. Then, create a task to display a pop-up notification with the battery level information.
You can also send an SMS when the battery is low. Create a profile based on the battery level, and then set the task to send an SMS to a specified phone number with a predefined message.
Tasker can also interact with Home Assistant using the Home Assistant API. To do this, you would need to install the AutoNotification plugin for Tasker and create a long-lived access token in Home Assistant. With Tasker, you can make HTTP requests to retrieve data from Home Assistant and perform actions based on the response.
These are just a few examples of what you can do with Tasker. It’s a powerful tool that allows you to automate tasks and customize your phone’s behavior based on various events and conditions.
The things that you can do with Tasker are endless, so have a play!