Why even have this as a feature in the Automations section of the Shortcuts app? I just don’t get it. When I arrive someplace and I have to press Run on my phone this just takes away the whole point. I can see if it’s just “You can put a shortcut on your Lock Screen and that can run a Shortcut that does a bunch of stuff and when you get to your destination just take your phone out and press the button”, but I don’t understand it saying, “hey, you can run an automation when you arrive at the grocery store.” You still have to take your phone out and press a button. I just don’t get it.
What is the point of having location based triggers for automations if they don’t run AUTOmatically?
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Agreed! This is my current pain point is I want to be able to setup my home automation stuff (like temperature based on various factors including if I am home or not). But everything falls apart based on the fact that I have a personal automation that runs when I arrive or leave home and sets a “dummy” switch in Homebridge that other automations can act on.
Sadly I am now chasing down using the IFTTT app to trigger it things, but that has a different set of challenges.
Oh by the way, YES, I understand the scenarios they originally targeted for this they probably had privacy concerns. But you can simply put up big bold warnings when you turn off “Ask to run” for those events that you fully understand that the script running will be triggered…
So is it just me, or previously was there a “Ask to run” option? I remember seeing it at one point but I don’t have the option anymore. It just seems weird that all I want is for when I get to Target, email my girlfriend, “I’m at Target, do you need anything?” And then remind me to take in my own bags and see if I have a gift card. No need to pull the phone out of my pocket.
For the triggers that Apple supports “Ask before running?” it shows (for example NFC tags), but for those triggers that don’t, as you see, the question isn’t there.
Again, for the location ones I get the concern that someone could download a shortcut that also logs location data on those triggers, but again you can solve that by putting a warning up when you select "Ask before running?: that there are risks for this.
Two, I know the next thing would be someone at your house that has physical access to your phone can configure it and approve the warning. So fine, I get annoyed by apps using location data all the time, warn the user every few weeks that this shortcut is setup.
But LAST and the point that makes all this irrelevant, I can simply setup a time based shortcut just as easy that captures location and records it without having to use the location change events, so the bigger risk is already out there.
Not that this is a total solution for free, but you can do this with Pushcut Server, I’m pretty sure, I’m not a server subscriber yet, but from what I read, it does just that and when you arrive at a location a dedicated iOS device you have running the server can send notifications without you pressing anything.
And yes, it requires you to have a spare ios device to dedicate running all the time and to accomplish this, I’m just mentioning a solution and I wish it could be done different also but its a solution to the problem if you have a spare device.
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Totally agree with original post. It is so frustrating. I want to run automations to send texts to let my wife know when I leave work and arrive at local station on days I’m in office and I have to manually enable the automation on my phone. It complely defeats the purpose.