Tasks

A task is simply a set of actions.

Named/Unnamed

A task can be given a name. This allows:

When creating a profile, often the associated task will consist only of one or two actions which will not be reused. For this case, Tasker allows you to create a task without a name (an Anonymous task).

Task Types

Execute
The actions in an execute task are carried out in sequence one by one.
Menu

When the profile of a Menu task is activated (or its widget/shortcut icon clicked) a dialog pops up and the user can choose which action to execute by clicking on one of the boxes.

If all items in the menu are Perform Task or Load App, then a grid of only the corresponding icons will be shown.

If a Menu task is performed while the device is off, it will be turned on for a short period.

The actions in a menu task are shown in a list.

Task Visibility

Unnamed tasks are only visible when editing the profile that they are associated with.

Named tasks are visible on any screen that allows task editing (there are 3). Any changes made to the set of tasks in any screen is reflected in all the other screens.

Task Icon

Each task has an associated icon, by default a question mark. The icon is used:

Deleting Tasks

Named tasks can only be deleted via the Delete button on the Task Edit screen. Unnamed tasks are deleted automatically when the profile they are part of is deleted, or a named task is selected for that profile.

When a task is deleted that is referred to in a profile, it is automatically removed from that profile.

When a task is deleted that is referred to by a previously created anonymous widget or task, the widget is unaffected. The widget has its own copy of the task in order to make response to clicking it faster.

Task Scheduling

When there is a single task waiting to be executed, it's actions are executed one-by-one until finished. A menu task is treated as a single action like a popup.

When there are several tasks in the queue at once, it's important to understand how they are handled:

Task priority, 0 to 10 inclusive, is the same as that of the profile that runs it. Profile priority can be set in the Profile Properties screen (press Menu in the Profile Edit screen). The default value is 5. The priority of tasks run by widgets or shortcuts can be set in Menu / Prefs / Action.

A couple of guidelines are:

Action Groups

Actions are divided into groups for scheduling based on how long the action takes to execute and what it interferes with:

Wait Actions

Wait and Wait Until are special cases. The rules for handling them are complicated and try to do the 'best thing' dependent on the situation.

Collisions

Sometimes a task needs to be executed of which a copy is already executing. This can happen quite often e.g. when a task widget button is pressed twice quickly, or a task contains a Wait action or shows a dialog.

The way in which a collision is resolved is specified by the user. There are 3 options:

Note that the last option can lead to several copies of a task all running at once.

Behaviour When Device Off

By default, after a few seconds of the screen being off Android will power down the device and thus running tasks will be paused.

In the Task Properties dialog, it can be specified that a task should keep running.

Dialogs
An action that shows some kind of dialog (such as a lock screen, popup, menu task) blocks execution of any other action, even one of higher priority, until it is completed.
Wait / Wait Until
These are exceptions. A wait action can be interrupted by another task's action and will resume (if necessary) when the other task's action is finished.

Killing Tasks

If you have a problem with a task that never ends, you can manually end tasks with the Kill Task button in the Task Edit screen.