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When Tasker has Notification Access & Do Not Disturb Access (to control ringer) it breaks the Greyscale feature of Wind Down in Android 10

I've been using a Pixel 2 since they were released and I used to have a profile which would see I am near my work's wifi and then set my ringer to 0 as not to disturb coworkers. This worked perfectly and had no ill effects for a few years.

I'm not sure exactly when, probably around February/March, the Greyscale feature of Wind Down would, seemingly at random times, disable itself after it had been activated (both manually & by time of day).

I was able to narrow the behavior down to Tasker and, specifically, Notification/DnD access permissions.

I've tried a few different permutations

  • just having Tasker installed
  • having it installed and having a harmless task (alert > flash %TIME)
  • running the harmless task via a profile (screen on, wifi near, etc.)

and the Greyscale feature of Wind Down continues to work flawlessly.

It is only once the Notification Access & Do Not Disturb Access permissions are granted that the Greyscale feature randomly disables itself (although if you look in the Wind Down settings, greyscale shows as still enabled).

I was able to recreate the Profile/tasks with a competitor's product (AutomateIt) and, while it requested the same permissions, I was able to deny them with no ill effects. Even without the requested permissions it is still able to set/restore ringer level 0/ringer level 7 (Tasker will not allow this). 

Please help! I'm willing and able to perform any troubleshooting, log gathering, etc; just let me know what you need :-)

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JM

I was finally able to get this solved!

Tasker does indeed, somehow, interfere with the 'Greyscale' settings of 'Wind Down' when it performs its periodic WiFi network check and the task is to manipulate the ringer state. 

The profile was originally based only on "State: WiFi Near 'Public WIFI'".

The work-around (probably overkill) was to add two additional conditions to the profile;

  • "State: Variable Value %INTERRUPT ~ all"  - run only if Do Not Disturb is off/disabled
  • "Time: From 5:00AM Till 2:00PM" - run only during working hours

With these conditions added, the Greyscale issue is worked-around to a satisfactory degree.

Please feel free to close this issue.

JM

Hi! Yes, I am sure I'm not changing it.. as far as I can tell, Tasker is unable to control the greyscale setting. Recently, I uninstalled and reinstalled Tasker then recreated the 'Alert > Flash > %TIME' tasks & 'Wifi Near' profile.. this is the only task/profile configured. I will monitor this configuration and see if the issue continues.

Thank you.

Hi! Are you sure you're not changing that setting somewhere yourself in your Tasker setup? Tasker doesn't change that setting by itself anywhere... Thanks in advance!

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