"Check if I am home"?

[scameron]

Rookie question here. I am trying to make a Shortcut that triggers under certain conditions, one of which is if I am home.

I feel like it should be as simple as

get current location
if location == home {do}
else {do}
exit

But it doesn’t seem so simple.

(I don’t understand the purpose of these conditions. What is the usefulness of checking whether “Current Location” has or doesn’t have a value? And how could “current location” possibly have no value? I’m confused. I also do not get any more condition options if I set more variables beforehand either.)

I can create a workaround, such as checking for my home Wi-Fi network, but I really want to understand conditional geolocation and ensure I am using Shortcuts with best practices. Other inputs such as “Location” also don’t seem useful for checking if I am at home. Is there a way to do this I’m not getting?

[tf2]

You probably need to do something with the location – such as turn it or part of it(eg, city or country) into text – and then test that.

This works for example:

[Tony]

Hi @scameron When you get the location, Shortcuts returns a whole load of information about the location. You need to select a specific part of the location information for it to be useful.

In your If statement, tap Location

and then select either the Town or Street option, depending upon how accurate you want your location to be:

and then you will get more options for your If statement:

You can then check something like:

You may also want to select the accuracy of the original Location:

otherwise you may get a nearby street returned (which could be possible even with Best, depending upon the strength of the GPS signal/accuracy wherever you are).

Hope this helps.

[sylumer]

A common approach to geo locating a home or office is not to rely on GPS at all (it can be slow), but to check instead if you are connected to a named WiFi network associated with that location.

Example
Each night when I put my phone on the charger, it checks of I am connected to my home wifi network. If I am, it then connects to an airplay speaker and plays some background audio. If I am not, then it does nothing.

[scameron]

Incredibly helpful post, thank you. Maybe next I’ll pursue a book about automation basics instead of making threads

[Marquedian]

I use Get Distance instead of location. If is less than> <0.02 miles>, do X. Normally its to check if I’m at home before running certain actions.

[scameron]

In the Shortcuts app, under Automation, the system automation wizard has built-in support for “When I am home”, etc. I wonder what the iOS system uses to determine “when I am home”? I assumed that “when I am home” was as simple as a boolean exposed to the user, but that doesn’t seem so.

[Marquedian]

Shortcuts uses “Home” and “Work” that are set up in the Contacts card for yourself. There are times that you have to be careful when choosing location names because they’re more like a nickname for the address, and you’ll still need to confirm the full address when setting up certain actions like Get Distance or Get Travel Time.

[mvan231]

I can second this method

[pmconaway]

Tony, I loved your response. I never knew that I could get to location details. I was at the same step as the OP and sort of stopped at that.

[Tony]

Glad it helped. As a general rule in Shortcuts, try tapping on any text in blue and there will be more options to choose from.