The third and last tab in Tasker is labeled Scene and this isn’t very critical to Tasker, usually, but it can make your Tasks a little more interactive.
We’ve already covered the most basic necessities of Tasker so far. I gave a nice little introductory explanation about What is Tasker. The next thing I talked about was about What Are Tasker Profiles. Then, yesterday I dove a little deeper into the application to talk about What Are Tasker Tasks. Today we are going to complete this basic overview and talk about the last tab in the application, Scenes.
A Tasker Scene can be all sorts of user interface elements that you choose to create.The most basic Scene would be a dialog box that pops up when Tasker has activated or completed a Task.
For example, you could create a Task that enables Airplane Mode when you walk into your house and your phone connects to your WiFi network. This might be something that you want to be made aware of so you could assign a Scene to this Task which creates a dialog box telling you that Airplane Mode has been enabled. This just a basic example of what a Scene in Tasker can do and I will go into more of an interactive example later with our first Tasker example.
When you first launch Tasker, you will notice that there are three tabs. One for Profiles, one for Tasks and then one for Scenes. Swiping all the way over(or just tapping on the tab) to the Scene tab will show you a blank page at first. You get a little explanation about what a Tasker Scene actually is that says ‘Scenes are user-interfaces that you can design yourself e.g. for creating your own applications or popup dialogs’. This is a great little summary of what they can do but as always, the feature is mainly limited by your imagination because there are many, many different things that you can do with a scene.
Tapping on the Plus sign at the bottom of the blank Scenes tab will bring up the Scene Editor and at first you’ll get a little tip to tell you what about Preview Mode. This will be the size of your dialog box or whatever else you plan on creating. When you’re done picking the size, you’ll need to press the magnifying glass icon at the bottom right of the screen. Once you do this, then you’ll be taken to the real editor and from here you can add in all sorts of different things to this scene.
Tapping on the Plus sign at the bottom of the screen will reveal a list of elements that you can add to your scene. You can add things like a button, a checkbox, a doodle, an image, a map, a menu, a number picker, an oval, a rectangle, a slider, a spinner, some text, a text edit field, a toggle or a webview window. As you can see these are things that can convey information to the user or they can be actionable windows as well. For example, you could create a toggle or a button that executes certain Tasker Tasks. This is a really nice little feature as it makes Tasker more than just an automation application.
The last thing that I wanted to mention about Scenes is how to add them into a Profile or a Task that you have already set up. This isn’t easy to figure out so I thought it would be some useful information to put out there. You’ll want to head to your Tasks tab and then tap on one of these that have been previously created. Once there, look at the bottom of the screen and tap on the Plus sign. Then tap on the Scene action, and tap on the Show Scene action. This will give you a full-page of options that you can customize but if you tap on the magnifying glass next to the Name section, then you’ll see a list of all the Scenes that you have already created. Simply tap on that and then back out of the screen(with either the back arrow or the back navigation button at the top left of the screen).
Hopefully this gave you a little insight into what Tasker Scenes are and what you can do with them. Later this week I will detail a very basic Tasker Task that integrates all three of the things we have talked about lately. I’m not sure where I will take this tip series after, but I think it might be useful to detail all sorts of different tasks that one could do with Tasker. If anyone has any questions about Tasker or would like to suggest some explanation articles written about various aspects of the application then please don’t hesitate to ask. You can use the comments section on any of these Tasker articles to get my attention.
