What are some cool but underrated Android Features on Android that most people don’t know about? those little things that make life easier but don’t get talked about much. I feel like there’s so much hidden stuff in Android that we miss out on.
What are some cool but underrated Android Features on Android that most people don’t know about? those little things that make life easier but don’t get talked about much. I feel like there’s so much hidden stuff in Android that we miss out on.
An application like tasker makes you realise the weird and amazing stuff you can do.
What do you use it for?
I’ve had it for a while,
but ended up uninstalling it,
since I could not think of a good use case.
I need to re set mine up, but my main use cases were opening a music app and playing music, opening Waze, and turning off text notifications if I connected to my cars blue tooth; and connecting to my VPN if I left my home WiFi.
Something else I wanna try soon is silencing my phones notifications if I’m connected to KDE connect on my desktop, since they should come through on the computer anyway
When I started first using Tasker back in around 2013 or so, I was mesmerized but what you could do with it. This was because at the time, too, I was rooted, so it really changed the possibilities with modes and so forth with Tasker. For example, NFC unlocking the phone when you tapped it to a NFC tag while the screen was OFF. That was killed by Google in Android 5 but before then, it was awesome! Tap on the tag and your phone would perform whatever task you told it do. Over the years, Google and other Android makers have slowly added different functions that Tasker was doing before them.
Since Tasker was taken over by the current Dev, it’s make many leaps and bounds over what it could before and simpler now. My tasks are:
Turn volume up ALL THE WAY for specific contacts and then back to the before volumes after the call. I have an older mother which hopefully live longer than 10 more years, but closing in on 80 years young, she’s going to get more fragile with her age so, my sister who lives near her, can call me in any issues pop up. (I live about 5 hours away). So, it’s essential to know when she’s calling me. On the same theme, when she texts me, I have it announce via TTS that she sent me a text. It’s also handy for when my wife calls me!
The phone restores the volume from silent when unplugged from the power charger in the morning ONLY after 7AM. I work from home and awake around 4:30am daily and around 7 is a good time to return sounds in the home. But, it is also conditional, so if on the weekend, I don’t wake up until 8am), it won’t turn sound on until I unplug it. (NOTE: The tasks to raise volume for the callers will override this mode which is good!)
The phone also turns the volume off at 9pm nightly since there’s no reason to have it make noise after then, all are home and pretty much it’s peaceful time.
The phone also sends a signal to my August Lock to send the unlock command when it put it my back pocket by reading a NFC Tag which contains a webhook to call Home Assistant to give the unlock instruction to the door lock.
When certain apps I define are open, it keeps the screen on all the time. I use this all the time when I’m at the store and running a calculator so it’s always up. A few other apps as well, but not too many.
A few others such as toggling the Private DNS server on my phone (I use dns.adguard-dns.com) on the phone to block advertisements and sometimes it doesn’t work so having a widget to toggle that off and on is super nice instead of navigating to it in settings.
I used to use Wiregaurd (Now on Tailscale), but before then, I had a task which would auto connect me to the Wireguard tunnel on my home network immediately disconnected from my WiFi, this ensured that I was always 100% on my home network. Tailscale does the same thing (If you set it to be always connected to your tunnel) , but I’ve been playing with that for a bit over a year and have pretty much settled there for now. My wireguard Tasker Profile for anyone interested:
https://taskernet.com/shares/?user=AS35m8nTnqPjajvNWFTA0s2cuT8IdHNE46iSJeH3U9724uLffLDxxiIVTbFo1jKBcieTRlRsEw%3D%3D&id=Project%3AWireguard+Toggles
Before the lock down of Covid, I used to have a profile which I still keep on which would trigger if I was NEAR a SSID for my work to silence my phone and restore the volume if I was away from it (or if I’m connected to my car’s stereo bluetooth if near the SSID). This worked flawlessly and never worried about stupid app notifications during work which would be frowned on. I occasionally go to the office and forget sometimes it’s triggered. :)
One that I’ve worked on for the last years, so sparingly was making a Google Voice robot which would see which contact you called and then send the calls through Google Voice instead of my phone dialer. I’ve made it work but not all the time, so never have trusted it. (I only give my cell number to my family and very trusted friends, everyone else gets my Google Voice number).
My Voice Robot project which is stale as I’ve had been busy with health issues off and on and life events otherwise:
https://taskernet.com/shares/?user=AS35m8nTnqPjajvNWFTA0s2cuT8IdHNE46iSJeH3U9724uLffLDxxiIVTbFo1jKBcieTRlRsEw%3D%3D&id=Project%3AGoogle+Voice+Robot
Overall, your imagination is the limiting factor for what you can do with Tasker, the dev has also made it so you can take 100% control over the phone by making Tasker the device owner which bypasses the need for root. I haven’t done it with my Pixel, but on the Samsung I had, it worked, but broke a work app so I disabled it (Requires a factory reset to enable and also disable it).
I use it to play the Wii Shop Channel theme when I open the Play Store
I’m sorry I made you have to re-download Tasker again now
I have a few routines that I use.
For example,
I have one that auto rotates some apps.
One that sends a notification to my watch when the phone is fully charged.
Another that enables NFC when I open the wallet app and disables it automatically.
Another that enables auto rotate, silences phone, and enables DND when playing games.
Thank you, those are some interesting/good use cases indeed!
I’ve used Tasker a lot years ago, but really wish this was backed into the OS. Everything feels very hacky and janky setting up routines via Tasker. Some apps supported Tasker which was nice, but for ones that didn’t, using AutoInput was such a pain. Having official support on the OS level would be so nice. Apple Shortcuts is like the only thing I think iOS does better than Android.
I know Samsung phones can do something similar with a built in Modes and Routines feature. They allow you to access things that otherwise would require root from tasker.