Personally paid for Niagara launcher as I find that to be the far superior launcher to any other I’ve tried. My second one is Symfonium, the most feature rich and well developed audio player.
What are yours?
Easy question for me, Tasker. Don’t know what I’d do without it. Come to think of it, as someone has already mentioned, Stardew Valley is pretty good too.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch.android.taskerm
This one? What do you use it for?
A couple of favorites that are different from what others already said:
- I strongly dislike autorotate on my phone so I always keep it off, however it makes perfect sense in apps like YouTube/Twitch. So I have one task that turns it on when opening one of those apps, and off again when closing them
- When I’ve got Bluetooth headphones, I can choose to have incoming texts read out to me. Very nice when walking/running outside and not needing to pull my phone out
- Similarly, I’ve got a task that will (optionally) read out the name of the song that’s playing to Bluetooth
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When my house guests text “#wifi” to me, they get an auto reply with the WiFi password.
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NFC tag stuck to my medication pouch. When I boop my phone to it (or tap a shortcut on homescreen), I can select what medication I have taken. The medication and the time gets added to the bottom of a Google sheets spreadsheet, that I, or someone supporting me can check to get an overview of how frequently I’ve been taking medication (especially useful for spotting high pain chunks of time due to more frequent usage of PRN pain meds).
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Another aspect of the medication tracking above is that it also can tell me the last time I took medication. For example, if I take ADHD meds at 12pm, then my next dose would be 4pm. If I tap the shortcut at 3pm, it’ll tell me I last took meds at 12pm and I’m next due at 4pm. Alarms tend to either startle me or not be noticed, but when I had smart lights and a notification light on my phone, I could make a colour gradient where “you have just taken meds” = red and “you are due to take meds” = blue, and as time progresses, the colour slowly becomes more blue. This works well for me, because I like visual reminders
Personally I use it to
- put a slider on the display that controls the flashlight when it is on.
- Quick setting tiles for fast charging, mono/stereo audio and adb debugging.
- a basic local website, so I can copy text from my phone to PC and vice-versa
- toggle settings when specific apps are open i.e. when google wallet is open turn on NFC
- request music from Rockbot while at work
- change wallpaper every 12h
Some examples of using Tasker:
- When a specific contact sends a text message, it alerts me using TTS so I can be aware they are trying to reach me. I have an older family member she lives closer to, so having an alert from her is important if anything should happen forbid it does. When I plug my phone in to charge, it auto silences the phone and keeps it silenced until I unplug it, built into the same task, if monitors for phone calls from my contact and a few others and overrides it.
When a specific phone contact or contact calls, it raises the volumes to max. This is useful if you went to an appointment, set your phone on silent or vibrate but forgot to reset it. After the call has been completed, it returns the phone to the original volume you set.
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When I scan a NFC Tag, i have it send a webhook to my August lock to unlock it. As an apartment dweller, if I go down to the car to unload groceries, the door by default auto locks. This means I have to pull the phone out, unlock it, open the August App, and then tell it to unlock the door and sometimes use the biometric to do so. Having the NFC tag do this means I can put it in my wallet and when I put my phone in the same pocket where the wallet it is, it triggers the door.
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When connected to my computer only, it keeps the screen on all the time.
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When I launch certain apps, it keeps the screen on until the app is closed. Very useful when you are at the grocery store working within a strict budget and want to see how much you have put in to the cart!
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I have a widget on my screen which toggles my Private DNS on/off. This allows me to disable the adblock dns I use if I encounter a public wifi which insists I disable it. (I usually stay away from those, and use my mobile data, but sometimes it’s unavoidable when there is so much interference your 5G goes to NONE and you have to be there for a while.)
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Likewise, I have a widget which toggles my Tailscale connection on/off which comes in handy as well. Again, if the Wifi spot rejects custom DNS’s and I’m in the scenario above.
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If you have a Google Account (Sadly, this is the only way). You can view the list of profiles/tasks which other people have built. It’s a growing list. https://taskernet.com/shares/
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Using third party software such as Wake on LAN, when I come home and connect to my WiFi, it wakes my computer. (Or really any condition I set to trigger it).
I will say that the dev is very responsive and active in releasing updates and new features.
With that said, it has a slight learning curve which he(the developer) is working on to help simplify things and modernize it more. Since taking over the project from the previous owner, it’s really grown.
I admit though, I used to have a lot more tasks and profiles, but it seems that Android is starting to bake those functions in so it’s not as used on my end. But don’t let it it sway you. Your imagination is the only limit with what you can do with Tasker.
Generally, for less than a cup of coffee, it’s worth the purchase price. :)
I have a profile that mutes my phone between 21:00 and 08:00 but only if I’m at home. I frequently work late into the night. I have a large number of backdrop images which are randomly changed every three hours, the lockscreen image is changed to match. I also have a desktop button to change it manually. I have profiles to backup various files onto remote servers. I also have a profile to stop my workout app when I get home, in case I forget.
