Automagic Forum

Hi, still loving your app
I would think it would be most useful, if it is possible, if there was a manual, guide lines, about what to think about building flows when it comes to battery consumption (and efficiency and memory), since battery often is an Akilles heel.

For example, in my flows I try to have as many as possible disabled and then enabled and execute them from the parent flow.But maybe it is better to have them enabled all the time. Another example, does it matter for the battery of it is a long flow or a lot of small flows (and for the execution time.

Then we have all those lovely triggers and actions, location, moving, entering, exiting location and lots of more that use GPS or Wifi that drains the battery. Is there a way to measure the drainage?

It's very hard to give an advice that's valid for all devices.
It's usually best to keep flow execution times as low as possible and execute flows as rarely as possible, so that the device is not woken up from standby mode. Accessing the network or turning on the display in a flow can also drain the battery.
Some triggers that are known to use a lot of battery, mostly triggers using sensor data, have a blue label indicating the power consumption.

The power consumption of location triggers highly depends on phone and method in use. GPS usually consumes a lot of battery, network methods use less battery. The new location methods using the Google Play services should use even less battery (labelled Modern in Automagic) but there have been bugs in the past that caused the modern location providers to use a lot of battery.

You can use a battery statistics app like BetterBatteryStats to see more detailed information about the battery use on your device.

Thank you for your answer.
Is it best, battery wise, to keep more flows enabled all the time or unabling them, assuming no difference in execution times? And what about longer , fewer flows, compared to shorter and more flows? Do you know?
Edit changed what the keyboard thought I should have written