Hello, I have been a long time android user for over a decade now so I have a lot of workflows figured out that I am now trying to replicate on ios. My main one I haven’t found a replacement for just yet is for my sleep tracking/smart alarm setup. I’m not sure what combination of apps would let me accomplish a similar experience or if some things just aren’t supported on ios. I have a 12 Pro Max on IOS 17b3.
My Android set up I’m looking to replicate is: Sleep As Android, Spotify, Tasker, IFTTT, and Phillips Hue
Sleep As Android did sleep tracking, white noise (playing at the same time as Audible audiobook), smart wake up (tracking sleep cycle and waking me up earlier if it thinks I’m in a light sleep), and automation triggering.
Upon starting bedtime/sleep tracking in Sleep, it would trigger IFTTT to turn off my Hue bulbs
When deep sleep is detected, it would trigger Tasker to turn off Bluetooth and stop audio playback (this is flexible I just want a way to disconnect from bluetooth and stop audio playback once I am asleep)
When alarm starts, it would trigger IFTTT to turn on my Hue lights and start playing a Spotify playlist at a slowly increasing volume.
To turn off my alarm I had to scan a QR code. This is the most consistent way I’ve found to actually get me up in the morning so its pretty important to me.
If you have any suggestions for replacing parts of this please share them! Thanks!
For white noise, go to setting control center and add the “hearing” button. Openness control center and press the new hearing icon, and choose background sounds. There’s a few white/dark noise options and this will also happily mix into the audio of any other app like music or books
Check out an app called Sleep Cycle. It has Hue integration built right in. No need for IFTTT.
The native iOS clock app has a feature where you can set a timer. At the end of the timer you can choose “stop playing” instead of an alarm tone.
iOS has built in “background sounds” that you can customize in settings>accessibility>audio&visual and then trigger via control centre. Works while playing other media at the same time.
You can setup a “personal automation” in the shortcuts app to start your Spotify playlist when you stop an alarm. Can’t think of any way to slowly increase the volume though.
As someone else mentioned, you can use an NFC tag instead of a QR code.
Just letting you know as a former Android user, there’s nothing like Tasker for iOS, and people who say Shortcuts is the same thing have never used Tasker. iOS doesn’t do anything other than push notifications without user interaction, and nothing can run in the background and access the system like Tasker. The design of iOS makes it impossible.
I’ve been an iOS user since 2013 and I still miss Tasker. God, I wish we could actually automate stuff in iOS.
I’m not sure about the sleep tracking part. You could use the shortcuts app to do a lot of what you’re after I think. Specifically the QR code, you could replace it with an NFC tag (you can buy them cheap from Amazon or aliexpress). Set your shortcut to stop the alarm when you scan the tab. Might be able to set up the same thing for going to bed. Scan the tag, lights turn off, alarm gets set, music starts. Something like that.
Best of luck!
For white noise I don’t think you can do any better than a physical device. I really like the Dohm white noise machines by Yogasleep.
I use Autosleep for sleep tracking, haven’t looked in quite a while but back when I did no others compared to how well featured and hands off it was. I use it with an Apple Watch, but I believe you can use it without if you leave your phone in bed with you while you sleep.
As far as automations go, shortcuts and the home app would be the IFTTT replacement, since IFTTT won’t have enough options for system commands as shortcuts/home app.
Using deep sleep as a trigger is just not possible. the closer you’ll get would be when sleep focus is on, but you can only automate focus modes based on time or location.
As for the QR code to turn off the alarm, there’s an app called Alarmy that does what you’re looking for, but i’m not sure if those alarms play nicely with shortcuts to run automations when you turn off the alarm, most certainly not.
