Your phone spends a surprising amount of time waiting for you to do small, repetitive things. Dim the screen before bed. Silence it when you walk into work. Turn on battery saver when the charge drops. Open your navigation app when the car starts. None of these need your attention, yet most people do them by hand, every single day.
Every modern phone already has a free app designed to do these things for you — and almost nobody opens it. On an iPhone it’s called Shortcuts. On a Samsung Galaxy it’s buried inside Settings as Modes and Routines. On other Android phones, the Google Home app’s Automations tab does a lighter version of the job. They all work on the same idea: when this happens, do that. And setting one up takes less time than reading this article.
An automation app is just a rule-maker
Forget the word “automation” and its overtones of complicated scripting. These apps are rule-makers with two halves. The first half is the trigger — the thing that starts it, like a time of day, a battery level, a place you arrive at, a Bluetooth connection, or an app being opened. The second half is the action — what the phone does in response, like switching on Do Not Disturb, lowering brightness, opening an app, or sending a message.
That is genuinely all there is to it. The reason these apps go untouched is that they’re built around a blank page, and a blank page with fifty possible triggers is intimidating. So it helps to think of it in reverse: start from a small annoyance in your day, then build one rule around it.
On an iPhone: the Shortcuts app already has an Automation tab
Shortcuts comes preinstalled on every iPhone running iOS 13 or later, so it is already sitting on your phone — it looks like a colourful knot of interlocking squares. Most people who have opened it at all only saw the Shortcuts tab. The part that matters is the Automation tab along the bottom.
Here’s a concrete one to start with: a wind-down routine that fires at 10:30 every night.
- Open Shortcuts and tap the Automation tab at the bottom.
- Tap the + (or New Automation if you have none yet) and choose Time of Day.
- Set it to 10:30 PM, leave Repeat on Daily, and tap Next.
- Start with a New Blank Automation, tap Add Action, and search for “Set Focus”. Choose it and set it to turn Do Not Disturb on.
- Add another action: search for “Set Brightness” and drag the slider down to about 20%.
- On the last screen, choose Run Immediately — and tap Done.
That last setting is the one that matters most. Without it, your phone shows a notification and waits for you to approve the automation, which rather defeats the point. “Run Immediately” tells it to fire silently on its own. If a trigger needs a phone-unlocked device to work properly, iOS will still tell you — but for time-based rules like this one, it just happens.
Samsung: Modes and Routines lives inside Settings
On a Galaxy phone there is no separate app to open — it’s a built-in feature called Modes and Routines. Open the Settings app and tap Modes and Routines near the bottom of the list. (If it isn’t there, your phone needs a software update first.)
The wording is different but the shape is the same: an If and a Then. The If is your trigger — a time, a place, a Wi-Fi network, a battery level, an app opening, a Bluetooth connection. The Then is the action.
A good first routine: when the battery drops below 25%, switch on battery saver before the red-battery anxiety sets in.
- In Settings, open Modes and Routines and tap the Routines tab at the bottom.
- Tap + to create a routine.
- Under If, add the condition Battery level and set it to below 25%.
- Under Then, add the action Power saving and turn it on.
- Name the routine something you’ll recognise — “Low battery saver” — and tap Done.
Samsung also throws in a Discover tab full of pre-made routines worth browsing, including sensible ones like turning on Do Not Disturb when you connect to your work Wi-Fi, or lowering brightness late at night. Starting from one of those and tweaking it is usually easier than building from a blank page.
Everyone else: the Google Home app’s Automations tab
If your Android phone isn’t a Samsung, the closest built-in equivalent lives in the Google Home app, under the Automations tab. Tap + Add, pick Personal, and add a starter — a voice phrase, a time, sunrise or sunset — followed by the actions you want. Google’s version is more voice-command oriented and has a dedicated “adjust phone settings” action that can silence the phone or switch on Do Not Disturb, so the bedtime routine above translates almost directly.
It’s the least powerful of the three, but it has one advantage the others don’t: it works on the phone regardless of brand, and the same routines can run on your smart speakers too.
Five rules worth setting up this week
If you’re sold on the idea but short on inspiration, these five cover the situations most people actually benefit from:
1. The wind-down. 10:30 PM → Do Not Disturb on, brightness down, and optionally an alarm set for the morning. The walkthrough for iPhone is above; on Samsung, use a Time trigger and add the alarm under Actions.
2. The battery net. Battery falls below 25% → power saving mode on. Build once and never think about it again. (On iPhone the trigger is “Battery Level” and the action is “Set Low Power Mode”.)
3. The drive mode. Connects to the car’s Bluetooth → opens your navigation app and turns on Do Not Disturb While Driving if your phone offers it. Samsung and iPhone both have a car-Bluetooth trigger, and this is one of those automations that feels like magic the first time it fires in the driveway.
4. The office door. Connects to the work Wi-Fi network → phone goes silent. The trigger here is a Wi-Fi network rather than a GPS location, which tends to be more reliable indoors — GPS can drift enough inside a building to toggle the rule at random.
5. The scrolling check. A specific app opens → a 15-minute timer starts. It won’t lock you out or scold you; when the timer chirps you simply notice you’ve been scrolling instead of surfacing forty minutes later. On iPhone: Automation → App → choose the time-sink → add the “Start Timer” action.
Three things to know before you automate everything
Automations live on one device. Set one up on your phone and it stays on your phone — it won’t quietly copy itself to your tablet or your partner’s phone. If you want the same rule somewhere else, you build it again there.
Be cautious with anything irreversible or outward-facing. Automations that change settings are low-risk. Ones that send messages to real people, delete files, or share your location are a different category — a rule that fires at the wrong moment sends the message anyway. If you automate messages at all, start with ones sent to yourself.
Test each rule once, the day you make it. Run it manually from the app and watch what happens. Triggers based on location can misfire, Bluetooth rules can collide with earbuds, and a brightness change that seemed reasonable at 2 PM can be blinding at 10:30 PM. One dry run tells you more than any amount of theory.
There is no prize for automating your entire life. One or two rules that remove a daily friction — the bedtime wind-down, the battery net — are worth more than twenty clever ones you never quite trust. But those one or two are genuinely free, already installed, and take about a minute each. Your phone has been capable of this for years. It was just waiting for instructions.
For more ways to make your phone less demanding, see the notification settings that make your phone noticeably calmer, and browse the rest of our Apps & Software section.
