I did something mildly clever with my iPhone recently

[thewayne]

I have a recurring problem with my phone at work/the university. It doesn't want to maintain its registration with the campus WiFi. And this is a problem because I use it as a part of my work process. I run the Apple iCloud app on my desktop PC and copy book information into the Notes app so that when I'm working in the stacks to pull books that I need, I can just look at my phone. But since it's not connecting to the WiFi, I have to manually turn OFF the WiFi in order for Notes to sync!

So I did some querying, and aside from having to adapt it from old information (older version of IOS), I set up an automation!

Now my phone watches for geofencing, and when I arrive at school, it automatically turns off WiFi! And when I leave school, turns it back on!

It's working quite reliably. I only wish I'd thought of it a couple of years ago. Fortunately my laptop doesn't seem to have a problem maintaining its WiFi registration.

Comments

[vdansk]

"I only wish I'd thought of it a couple of years ago" rings true for so many things. Congrats on figuring it out now!

[thewayne]

Better Nate than lever!

[disneydream06]

Ain't technology grand? :o :o :o
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

When it works properly and the way you want it to, yes.

[arlie]

It's sad that our tech victories are so often implementing a workaround for an upstream deficiency. But congratulations on your success in working around this one.

[thewayne]

What saddens me even more is that after 30 years of good computer advances, we're still frequently left with rebooting or powering off the computer to clear it to a zero state to fix a problem.  Meaning that engineers these days don't fully understand systems well enough to actually fix problems, just reboot and hope for the best.

[silveradept]

Good work. Would that the deficiency in the technology were fixable or fixed, but as workarounds go, this one isn't bad at all.

[thewayne]

I'm only going to be working there for another four months, it's just not that important to bother with.  This trick works quite nicely.

[kaishin108]

I wish I was as smart as you about that kind of stuff!

[thewayne]

I've been working with computers professionally and recreationally since the early(ish) '80s with a lot of education thrown in there.  You develop skills and techniques for problem-solving.  Don't ask me to spin yarn like you do. :-)

[kaishin108]

Aww!