What have YOU done with Tasker?

[25cents]

Every time I open this app to play with it, I'm amazed at what it can do. Below are a few of the things I've done with it, and how to do them yourself. Feel free to add any other useful profiles you've created.

1. Random Ringtones!

This one is (relatively) simple if you have any programming chops, and should be pretty easy to follow even if you don't. The gist is that every time you get a phone call (or text, or even an alarm) you can change what the next ringtone will be. This can save you the aggravation of hearing the same ringtone 50 times in a 5 minute period (yes, so could vibrate, but I'm stubborn), and if you've downloaded a number of ringtones, now you get to hear them all! Hooray!

I’ll be walking you through how to set up Notification tones, as I haven’t bothered with ringtones yet.

First, you need to open up Tasker and hit the "New" button at the bottom. Your first context will be:

Event> Phone> Received SMS

Leave both fields blank. This means that any actions you set in this profile will occur whenever you receive an SMS message, no matter who it’s from or what the message says.

Next, you’ll see an empty screen. We want to fill this up with actions for the phone to take, so that something actually happens. To add a new action, click the blue “+” sign at the bottom of your screen. This brings up the Action Category screen. For this, you’ll want to click the following:

Media> Ringtone

The dropdown menu here defaults to “Alarm” – click here and change to “Notification”. Then you’ll long-click the field marked “Sound” – here, select whatever ringtone you wish. Next, check the “If” box. In the field that has a “%” symbol already in it, you’ll want to type “TEXT”. It should now say “%TEXT” in this box – DO NOT DELETE THE %. Next, click the box that has the “~” in between the two text boxes. Set this to “Maths: Equals”. In the last text box, enter a value of 0.

Now, you’re going to repeat this for every ringtone you have, step for step – except for that last text box. Every time you add a new ringtone, add one to that value – the first ringtone will be 0, the second will be 1, the third 2, and so on. For example, if you have 15 ringtones, your final value will be 14.

Now that you’ve got all of your ringtones set, you’ll want to make it so that the system knows to switch randomly between them. You’ll create a new action, so click the blue “+” sign. Here, we will select the following:

Variable> Variable Randomize

Here, we’ll see the familiar “%” sign – we’ll continue to use “%TEXT”. For the minimum value, we’ll type in 0, and for the maximum, use the last number you used for a ringtone. As in our previous example, if you have 15 ringtones, you’ll type 14 into the maximum field.

Next, we need to make sure that Tasker is the program that is notifying you of your incoming SMS message – we want all our hard work to pay off. Create a new action, and click through the following:

Alert> Notify Vibrate

Leave all the fields (except the title) blank. I just titled the notification SMS – seemed easiest. Next, so that we can hear ringtones, create a new action as so:

Alert> Notify Sound

Again, leave all the fields blank. Now Tasker will notify you of incoming SMS messages – but you’ll want to disable notifications in your other messaging apps, to make sure that there’s no conflict.

When you click done, you’ll have a profile set up that will randomly select one of your ringtones and play it when you receive an SMS.

If you’re the tl;dr type…

Context > Received SMS

Media > %RINGTONE1% if %VARIABLE = 0
Media > %RINGTONE2% if %VARIABLE = 1
Media > %RINGTONE3% if %VARIABLE = 2
…etc.

Variable > Variable Randomize > %VARIABLE from 0 to MAX

Alert > Notify Vibrate

Alert > Notify Sound

Disable Messaging apps notifications

[25cents]

You say you want a widget to turn on/off away notifications? I can help!

First, long click on an empty spot on one of your home screens. You’ll be selecting “Widget” from the menu that pops up. Scroll down until you locate the Tasker widget – this will open a new context menu. Your fist task will be to increment a variable:

Variable > Add Variable

You’ll leave the slider set to 1, and in the variable name menu (the box with the “%” in it), you’ll put something like “%AWAY”. Next, you’ll set the variable %AWAY to 0 if it goes above 1:

Variable > Set Variable

The variable name is “%AWAY”. In the box labeled “Value”, put 0. Click the checkbox next to “if”. In the variable box put “%AWAY”, click the middle button and select “Maths: Greater than”, and type “1” in the final box.

You’ve just created an “ON/OFF” switch that does nothing – feels good, doesn’t it?

Now, if you want to know if your switch is on or off, you can add some new tasks:

Alert > Notify

Do the above twice, and title them something indicative of On and Off. For on, you select the ‘if’ box again and set it to “%AWAY” “Maths: Equal” “1”. For off, do the same exact thing but replace “1” with “0”.

Now, we have an on/off switch that lets us know when it’s on and off, even if it’s not doing anything else. Progress!!

Go ahead and click the “Make Widget” button. We’re going back into the main Tasker application to finish this up.

Remember the “Received SMS” random ringtone project? Click on the right side of that, and click “Edit”. You’ll see the list of tasks that you created before. If you haven’t created this, just create a new profile and select:

Event > Phone > Received SMS

Now you’re all caught up.

You’ll be creating a new task:

Phone > Send SMS

In the number field, type “%SMSRF” – this means that the number that texted you will be the number that your phone responds to.

In the message field, type your own, personalized away message.

Click the ‘if’ button, and in the variable box, put “%AWAY”, “Maths: equals”, and “1”.

Now, whenever you turn your switch on via the widget we created earlier, your phone will be put in an ‘away’ mode, and any texts that you receive will be automatically responded to via Tasker.

tl;dr

Home Screen > Widget > Tasker

Variable > Variable Add > Value 1

Variable > Variable set > Value 0 if %VARIABLE > 1

Make Widget

Tasker

Phone > Received SMS

Phone > Send SMS > From: %SMSRF > if %VARIABLE = 1

[25cents]

Ever lost your phone? Ever had it stolen? I have. It suuuucks. And losing something like my Droid, which I spent close to $400 on and countless hours customizing, well that would just break my heart.

First of all, you should be aware of the number of security options out there – I use Locate My Droid. It only makes a GPS connection when you log into the site and ask it to, so it doesn’t drain your battery, and depending on how well your GPS works in the area, you’ll get a pretty accurate reading of where it is. This of course doesn’t help if your phone has died by the time you figure out it’s gone…

This is where Tasker comes in. With tasker, you can locate your phone via GPS, network, or WiFi. Here is a useful article on which applications to use when: http://tasker.dinglisch.net/userguide/userguide_loctears.html

Simply set up a profile that activates when your phone boots up, and set the following tasks:
Net > WiFi > On
This will turn WiFi on immediately when your system boots.
Misc > GPS > On
This will turn on GPS – now you will be able to locate your phone accurately almost anywhere it is.
Net > Compose Email
Now, send this email to your personal email account, at the very least. Place whatever you like in the subject. In the body, just put “%LOC” and “%BATT”, separated by a space.

Now you’re done! Every time your phone boots, tasker will set WiFi and GPS to On, and will send you an email telling you the location and battery power available.

[brochaos]

i've been following this on lifehacker...seems pretty cool.

is there a way where you could have it auto launch pandora and then switch to google maps when you hit a speed of say 25 mph?

[25cents]

I don't know of any way to set anything up based on speed, but that doesn't mean that it can't be done. I know I have an app that displays an accelerometer, so it's something that may be possible in the future if it's not now.

[aminaked]

i've been following this on lifehacker...seems pretty cool.

is there a way where you could have it auto launch pandora and then switch to google maps when you hit a speed of say 25 mph?

haha, that could really come in handy! neat idea. i want.

[atnbirdie]

"Now, send this email to your personal email account, at the very least. Place whatever you like in the subject. In the body, just put “%LOC” and “%BATT”, separated by a space.
Now you’re done! Every time your phone boots, tasker will set WiFi and GPS to On, and will send you an email telling you the location and battery power available."
==================
So how do you get Tasker to get the phone to send the email? Tasker lets me compose, but I can't figure out how to get it to actually send the composed email message.

[25cents]

"Now, send this email to your personal email account, at the very least. Place whatever you like in the subject. In the body, just put “%LOC” and “%BATT”, separated by a space.
Now you’re done! Every time your phone boots, tasker will set WiFi and GPS to On, and will send you an email telling you the location and battery power available."
==================
So how do you get Tasker to get the phone to send the email? Tasker lets me compose, but I can't figure out how to get it to actually send the composed email message.

I ran into the same problem when I finally had the opportunity to test it myself. Perhaps a future version will have a "send email" option - in the meantime, I just changed the profile to send an SMS to my google voice number with the same info.

Sorry about that. Next time I post a profile, I'll be sure to test it first.

Other addendums:

For the ringtone profile, I found that it works best if you put the Notifications at the top, then the variable randomizer, then the ringtones.

[brochaos]

I don't know of any way to set anything up based on speed, but that doesn't mean that it can't be done. I know I have an app that displays an accelerometer, so it's something that may be possible in the future if it's not now.

well if you use the car dock magnet, i'm sure you can set it to trigger off of that right?

or maybe have the auto-reply text message when you are in car dock mode.

[iherbivore]

Is everyone just launching Pandora? How do I get it to actually play? Is it possible?

Also, I have a droid x, pushing the media button on my headset opens voice commands instead of pausing/playing Pandora. I tried to set up a handler for this, but failed. My headset has one button on it, so I created a context for media button (play) but voice commands still launches. I tried making one for the other buttons listed just in case, but none of them would stop voice commands from opening. (for the task I tried a flash message so I could see if it caught the condition, but it doesn't) . Any ideas?