New Tasker beta supports readout html and json

Android automation app Tasker has support for interpreting HTML and Json data in its latest beta. These options were technically already in the app, but required a lot of user effort to get them working.

Tasker developer João Dias gives brief demonstrations of how the new html and json functions work in the changelog on Reddit. In those videos he calls it ‘easy’ to work with html and json in the app. Knowledge of the two things is still required to understand what one is doing, but it has become easier than it was before.

He emphasizes that it is possible that setups will no longer work after this update in specific cases, because this version changes the ‘dictionary’ of Tasker variables. In particular, reading json calls Dias “experimental” and adds that the feature may go away in the future. However, under its changelog, users are unanimously positive about the new features.

In addition to html and json, Tasker gets support for Tick Events in this version, so that a task can be repeated more often than once every two minutes. That maximum has now become once every 100 milliseconds, although the developer calls that “probably not recommended.” Furthermore, there is now a favorites menu for frequently used actions, so that you don’t have to search as long.

Tasker describes itself as ‘total automation for Android’. The app works by associating sets of actions, called tasks, with certain conditions, which the app calls contexts. Examples the developer mentions on his site are using the volume buttons as a scroll wheel in Chrome, opening a specific app when a certain finger is placed on the fingerprint scanner, and turning up the brightness and enabling auto-rotate when a video app is opened.