FAQ

My apps aren’t launching! This sucks!

When an app you want to launch with AutoLaunch isn’t launching you need to find why. These are the steps you can take to help you figure it out:

  • If you were in the AutoLaunch beta, uninstall and reinstall the app and redo all your Tasker AutoLaunch actions. The regular version is incompatible with the beta.
  • If you are using AutoVoice to launch an app with the “open (?<app>.+)” expression:
    • VERY IMPORTANT! Check that you don’t have a space after the expression. 80% or so of the errors I see are because of this. It should be “open (?<app>.+)” (without the quotes) and not “open (?<app>.+) “. Also, check for any other spaces that shouldn’t be there. The only space that should be there is the one after “open”
    • create a popup with the text “%app” (with the quotes) in Tasker in the same Task that contains the AutoLaunch action. This will allow you to quickly see if the app name is coming correctly from AutoVoice.
  • Very important thing you should always do: Check the logs! Turn on System logs in the AutoLaunch main app screen and try to launch the app again. Then go into the log listing and you’ll see what AutoLaunch is looking for. Maybe you misspelled the app? Maybe there’s an extra space in the app’s name you didn’t notice? Here you’ll see what might be wrong. Make sure to disable system logs when you’re done, as it makes the app slower.
  • Create an AutoLaunch task and write the app name you’re trying to launch directly in the action, using no variables. Just write the app’s name, like “YouTube” or “Music”, but don’t use variables. This will let you know that the problem is really in AutoLaunch and not somewhere else
  • If the above fails, go to the “Manage Apps” screen in AutoLaunch and check if the app you want is there. This is the list AutoLaunch uses to search for the app you want to launch
  • If you still can’t get it to work please report the problem to me, mentioning:
    • Name of app you’re trying to launch
    • What appears in the Toast when you try to launch the app (enable toasts in the main app screen)
    • Nickname you gave that app (if any)
    • What you put in the AutoLaunch “Name or Nickname” field
    • What you put in the AutoLaunch “App Name” field
    • What you put in the AutoLaunch “Package Name” field
    • What other options you selected in the AutoLaunch action

 Why is this any better then just using Tasker to launch apps?

With just Tasker you need to manually specify which apps to launch.

For instance, if you want to launch facebook by voice, you need to setup a specific profile with the voice command “open facebook”, and a task that opens facebook specifically.
Then you have to do this for every app you want to launch.
With AutoLaunch you have just one profile and you say the app you want to launch, and AutoLaunch will launch it by name like you can see here: http://joaoapps.com/autolaunch

 

How do I use app Nicknames?

First you need to set nicknames for your apps. To do this use the “Manage Apps” screen and long click any app to set its Nickname. Then, when you’re launching or querying apps with AutoLaunch, use the “Name or Nickname” field. This will first look through all your apps that have nicknames first, and if it doesn’t find any app that matches it, it will try and search in all the app’s labels for that name. This lets you, for instance, add the nickname “Music” to an app called “Pandora”, and when you query for apps with the nickname “Music”, Pandora will be returned along with all your other apps that contain the word “Music” in their name.

 

I don’t know what to do in screen X of the AutoLaunch app!

On each of AutoLaunch’s screens there’s a small info button on the top left. If you click that, you’ll get info about the screen you’re on at the moment.

 

How do I find out the package names for apps?

You can use the “Manage Apps” screen. The package name is above each app’s name in smaller font. You can also go to Google Play and look at the URL of any app. For instance, for Google Play Music the URL is https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.music. The part after “id=” is the app package name, which in this case is com.google.android.music.