Yaxel's Blog

Note: This only works on Android.

I was too lazy to pull out my phone to read notifications, so I programmed it to vibrate in morse code. Here’s how you could do this too, probably:

1. Install Tasker and AutoNotification (not free).

2. Download and import this Tasker profile I made. Tap “profiles” and then “import” in the Tasker app.

3. Download this JS script somewhere onto your phone. (Documentation for the Tasker JS API).

4. Tap on the profile and edit the task (right side) so that it can find the .js script. I put mine in Download/ because I’m lazy.

5. Test the task (press play). It should vibrate “SOS” in morse code. If it doesn’t, StackOverflow can’t help you. Good luck.

6. (OPTIONAL) Change the %text variable. I set it to vibrate the first 3 letters of the app that produced the notification, but you can change it to vibrate anything. (Full list of variables)

7. Go back and configure the AutoNotification Intercept behavior (tap profile, left side) to select which apps to listen to.

If you followed all these steps plus some other ones that I forgot, you should now have a new way to read notifications. In my experience, friends and family will be marginally impressed.

I’ve only tested this on a Google Pixel 2. Your mileage may vary.

Possible Improvements:

• Increase WPM. I’m not very good at reading morse code so I keep it at ~15 WPM. More experienced users could probably set it higher, although I’m sure at some point you would reach the physical limitations of your phone’s vibrate feature. This is set in the .js file, but it should be set in the task itself.

• Disable the original notification vibration. Right now I have it set to wait 500ms because I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of the normal notification vibration.