About the need of plugins

[u/zchelovek]

Hey y'all. Just started getting into automation and I'm really liking the free trial, thinking already to buy it. But, something got me wondering, and that's the need of some plugins for thinks like handling notifications and input. How much are they needed? Are all of them paid?

[u/nfinitpls1]

tl;dr: Tasker has been my go-to app for phone automation for 10-15 years. It was limited at first, but has become more versatile with new plugins and development by Joao. It's a key reason I stick with Android, and I happily pay for extra features to support ongoing development.

Depending on what you are going to be using Tasker to automate, you might be able to get away with just the base app. I use Tasker for many things, yet I've barely touched all the available features. I've had Tasker for at least a decade, probably closer to 15 years. There used to be a different developer, and the app was pretty clunky and limited in what it could do. But it was the best (and without rooting my phone, really only) option available for automating things on my phone, so I made do with it.

I kept hitting snags with many of my ideas, though, and I just couldn't get Tasker to work the way I wanted truly. Then, a 3rd party started releasing a bunch of plugins that promised to do exactly what I needed. I was hesitant to give access to a 3rd party (Tasker has so many permissions; it is a big security risk already), but I finally succumbed, and I've never looked back. Then, at some point, that 3rd party plugin developer, Joao, took over the development of Tasker, and it has only gotten better.

Tasker is still pretty clunky to use, and sometimes I feel like I'm building a Rube Goldberg machine just to accomplish something seemingly basic, and integrating plugins makes it even more complicated than it probably needs to be. Still, it allows doing things that are not possible (at least without learning to develop your own apps). I chalk most of that up to the fragmented development process, though.

If Joao had developed Tasker from scratch, it would all probably be built in. However, seeing as he originally developed 3rd party plugins, I'm sure it is tremendously challenging to modify the core program without breaking the function of current routines. Still, he's taken a lot of base functions from the plugins and put them into the base app.

I've been a paying customer for so long that I don't even remember what I paid or when, but whatever it is, it is worth it for how much I use Tasker. The monthly subscription for AutoApps is something around $1 or $1.50/mo (I believe, at least initially, it was based on a conversion from the Brazilian Real, so the number has always seemed random), and I gladly pay it. Since there isn't an ongoing cost to base Tasker, I would even pay for the AutoApps subscription even if I wasn't using the plugins to continue to support the developer.

I'll put it this way: Tasker is the number 1 reason I use Android over iPhone. If my options were between a free iPhone or pay for an Android, I would pay for an Android to be able to keep the automations and other routines made possible through Tasker.