Gadgetory

hello and welcome to Android Authority I mark Android is all about freedom and control it's about having the freedom to control and operate your device any way you please Tasker is one Android app that lets you do just that in this video learn the basics of using this task control and automation app since it has so many features then I can adequately discuss in just a few minutes I'll just stick to the basics and I hope that it will help you get started with Tasker Tasker is often described as an automation app but it won't automatically automate things for you right out of the box you will need to start behaving like you're the master of your device and lay down the rules that define how your Android ought to behave this is a very powerful app most people think that Tasker is only about scheduling tasks it can do more than just that for example you can use Tasker to play random songs from your music library when you wake up you can apply random wallpapers every couple of hours or so you can use it to alert you by SMS when certain events occur on your phone days plus many more tasker's user interface looks deceptively clean tidy and simple but it can easily overwhelm you especially if you're an Android rookie as you shall see in a little bit Tasker is a flexible yet complex app but it is not necessarily complicated freshly installed Tasker runs in beginner mode this is how the simple interface looks like these tabs here are for the various Tasker objects profiles tasks and scenes we'll talk more about them later to switch tabs just swipe or tap on the tab name when you tap a tab name you also get an options menu for that tab down here is the search button the Add button and of course the Help button which a newbie like me can easily consider as the panic button if you're up for some geeky adventure you can disable beginner mode tap on menu preferences go to the UI tab and uncheck beginner mode when not in beginner mode tasker's UI changes a bit for instance you get a new tab called VARs right here and at the bottom row you'll find project tabs the default project called base is this one here represented by the home icon new projects that you create will be shown as tabs on this row tap on an open projects name to bring up the project menu this button of course is the Add button for these top tabs here don't confuse this button with the Add button for projects Tasker would not be Tasker if it were not for tasks a task can consist of one or several actions actions are things that your Android device does tasks and actions are the building blocks of Tasker let's try creating a task for instance let's create one that will call bedtime which I want to run when I go to bed at 9:00 every night first open a tasks tab tap the plus sign and enter the task name bedtime in this case this is the task edit screen here I'll be adding actions to this task what actions do I want my phone to perform when they go to bed hmm I surely don't want to be disturbed by calls or SMS so I will want to put my phone on silent mode tap this plus sign here tab audio then tap silent mode I want silent mode to be activated so on this screen change this to on tap the back button to save the action here's the action we just created I might also want to disconnect from my wireless network before I go to bed let's add the action like this tap the add' button tap net tap Wi-Fi then specify off as the value for set tap the back button and presto we now have two actions in this task our task called bed time is also now listed on the tasks tab it's a very simple task of course but surely you can create more elaborate and more complex tasks the more familiar you become with Tasker our bedtime task however won't run at all unless you execute it manually it can manually execute a task by tapping the play button on the task edit screen you can also run it through a task shortcut or task widget just place a Tasker widget on the home screen as you normally would then select the task store associated with a shortcut or widget the task will be performed when you tap on the shortcut or widget the second way to run a task is by linking it to a trigger resulting in automated task execution when you link a task to a trigger you are in fact programming your Android device to run tasks according to certain rules or conditions that you specify in Tasker such conditions or triggers are called contacts let's try linking our bedtime tasks with the contacts I want a bedtime tasks to run at 9:00 in the evening and stop at 6:00 in the morning clearly this calls for a time-based context or trigger to set it up first open the profiles tab profiles are containers for context and the tasks associated with them tap the Add button type a name for the profile if asked select time from the list on the screen set the start time and the end time in this case start time is 9:00 and evening and end time is 6:00 in the morning tap the back button to return to the preview screen from the pop-up list select the name of the task that you want to link to this context in this case bedtime awesome I just told my phone to switched to silent mode and turn off Wi-Fi from 9:00 in the evening until 6:00 in the morning of the next day things become more fun because of custom gooeys or graphical user interfaces known in Tasker as scenes I'm sure you're familiar with pop-up boxes dialog windows menus and forms these are all examples of gooeys and you can create them and Tasker even if you have no programming experience I won't talk exhaustively about scenes here but I'll show you how scenes work just to give you an idea of the power of Tasker here's a very crude and simple example of the scene that I made I call this pop SMS because it pops up a text box displaying an incoming SMS message and its sender you can create scenes like this with the help of tasker's graphical editor this area is the canvas or display area in which I've laid out three elements two text boxes and a button this text box displays the SMS message body it's configured to display the most recent SMS message via this built variable this other textbox is configured to display the SMS sender via this built-in variable finally this button is configured to respond to tap gestures I've set this button to destroy the pop SMS scene when the button is tapped scenes don't run er execute on their own they need to be called from actions or tasks my pop SMS scene for example is invoked by the show scene action in a task that I created for it I configure the show scene action to display the pop asommus scene as a dialogue with its background dimmed heavily finally I also needed to link the task to a context in this case I linked it to an event specifically the received text event this instructs the phone to execute the task when the phone receives an SMS text message therefore displaying the pop SMS scene and as expected when I tap this button the scene is instantly closed Tasker has many other advanced goodies that you'll enjoy or otherwise find extremely useful among them are variables which further extend tasker's capabilities as well as other advanced usage such as scripts plugins pattern matching advanced Tasker preferences and many more you can even package you projects or individual tasks as standalone apps that your friends can install on their Android devices as I've said earlier tasks ters power can be overwhelming but with a bit of patience and some eagerness learn you'll be able to weave in and out of its complex corridors easily in this video I've shared to use some of the basic ways to use Tasker I hope you find this video helpful for more Android guides news and reviews visit android authority comm and subscribe to our youtube channel i'm mark thank you for watching until next time and remember the power of Android is yours