Automagic Forum

Event is Something that happen instanly, while State is something that stay in a certan condition for a period of time. You can rephrase the wording for Event = When, State = While. So something that happen for split moment such “When time reach 08:00”; will be an Event, as it we only reach 08:00 at a split moment. But “While time range 08:00 – 17:00” is a condition, since it cover a longer period of time.

This Event and State are probably the confusing part if you move from tasker to automagic. In tasker, you can create a profile with event and state together as the "Trigger". While in automagic you can only use "event" as the trigger, but "state" must be checked using condition. The concept is actually the same. Tasker simply hide what happens underhood.

For example you want something like, when phone is charged, phone is not in active call state, announce the battery percentage. In tasker this will be
Profile : State > Power > Power > Source AC
Profile : Event > Phone > Phone Idle
Task : Action > Alert > Say : %BATT

But in Automagic,
Trigger : Power Source : Connected (AC Adapter)
Condition : Call State : Idle
Action (true) : Speech Output : {battery_level}

As you can see, tasker use 2 profiles and the logic is AND. Means only when both profiles are true, then it will be executed. While in Automagic, it is the event of power connected trigger the flow. Then it will check if call state : idle, if true, then execute action speech. Automagic also has Condition Power Connected, to check state. While the trigger version check for event.

In tasker, State Power can behave like state but also can behave as event, depends on what other profile it pairs to. Other tasker profile also behave in similiar way, Application, Day, Location, Time; all of them can behave as event or state, depends on the other profile. If alone, it will behave as event. Pair with other event based, it will behave as state. Pair with other state based, it will behave as event or state, depends which one triggered first (based on power consumption). While in Automagic, the separation is very clear. Triggers always react to event, conditions always check for state. There are several triggers also have the pair in conditions (such as Power Connected above), and can be paired to create a similiar logic like in tasker. For me, I prefer Automagic for its clear distinction between event and state.

In each tasker profile, we can set a entry task and exit task. Exit task will be executed when the profile is evaluated not to true anymore. This is possible because some tasker event can act just like state. But some event/state will disable the exit task. Automagic doesn't have exit task, as all triggers only react to event. To create a similiar logic, we use trigger with the opposite of the entry task. So if the trigger is App Task Started, the "exit task" trigger is App Task Ended. These two triggers can be in different flow, or can be combine into single flow to behave just like tasker profile.