Automation to change home screen at sunrise and sunset stopped working with 16.2

Question

Automation to change home screen at sunrise and sunset stopped working with 16.2

I set up two albums, "Night Wallpaper" and "Morning Wallpaper", each with a single photo.

I had 2 shortcuts - one that selected a single photo from a "Night Wallpaper" and one that selected a single photo from "Morning Wallpaper", e.g.,

"Find All Photos where Album is Morning Wallpaper"

Followed by "Set Wallpaper to Photos for Home Screen". IOW, select a single photo from one of two albums and set that home screen to that photo.

Then at sunrise and sunset, I had a automation that either ran the Morning Wallpaper or Night Wallpaper shortcut. IOW, my home screen would change twice a day.

So I have a fixed lock screen. I NEVER CHANGE IT. I don't want to change it. I like it just the way it is. But I do change the home screen wallpaper each month with a different morning and evening wallpaper (e.g., Christmas and winter scenes right now). It broke with the first install of ios16 but I managed to get it working again. Now, with ios16.2, it's even more hosed.

I've conducted the following "experiment".

First, I set up two new screen configurations, both with my different lock screen photo, and each with the different morning and evening photo. In this configuration, the automations do NOT work. The automation "runs" without an error, but doesn't change the home screen wallpaper. I can manually change it from Settings:Wallpaper or by doing the click/hold from the lock screen and selecting one of the two configurations, but the automation does not work.

***However, if I set the lock screen and the home screen to the SAME photo, the automation works, i.e., it changes the lock and home to the morning or evening wallpaper when I run it from within the shortcuts application.

This feels like a bug to me but I may just be missing something simple.

If anyone has this automation working in 16.2, please share.

Or, if anyone can explain why this is happening, I'd appreciate it.

TIA

iPhone 13 Pro

Posted on Dec 20, 2022 3:48 PM

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Answer 1

UTBadger

Community Specialist

Dec 21, 2022 6:32 PM in response to Anne Giansiracusa

Hey Anne Giansiracusa,

We'd be happy to help out. It sounds like you're having an issue with a particular personal automation not working as expected since updating. The following information provides more detail on this feature of Shortcuts, and provides steps to assist in recreating this to see if it will work as expected for you moving forward:

Personal automation provides a way to run actions based on events such as time of day, arrival at a location, or the opening of an app. A normal shortcut requires you to run it from the Shortcuts app, the Shortcuts widget, or the share sheet, whereas personal automation actions use event triggers, travel triggers, communication triggers, or setting triggers to run.

After you create a new personal automation, when an event occurs you’ll receive a notification asking you to run the automation. You can also edit a personal automation to run without asking.

Personal automation is specific to a device. The automation will be backed up to iCloud but will not sync to other devices.

Create a new personal automation

1. In the Shortcuts app on your iOS or iPadOS device, do one of the following:

• If this is your first automation: Tap Automation .

• If you’ve previously created an automation: Tap Automation , then tap in the upper-right corner.

2. Tap Create Personal Automation.

3. Choose a trigger, such as Time of Day or Arrive.

See Event triggers, Travel triggers, Communication triggers, or Setting triggers.

4. Select the options for the trigger, then tap Next.

An empty automation appears in the automation editor.

5. Tap Add Action, then browse available actions in the Categories or Apps list, or search for a specific action by tapping and entering a search term.

6. To add an action to your automation, touch and hold an action in the list, then drag it to the position where you want it in the automation editor.

You can also tap an action to add it to the bottom of the action list in the automation editor.

7. Add as many actions as you need for your automation.

Tap at the top of the actions browser to return to the Categories or Apps list.

Tip: You can change the order of actions by dragging them to different locations in the shortcut editor.

8. To test your automation, tap .

To stop the automation, tap .

9. Tap Next.

A summary of your automation appears.

10. Tap Done.

The new automation is added to the Automation screen.

This information is all outlined in the following resources:

Intro to personal automation in Shortcuts on iPhone or iPad

Create a new personal automation in Shortcuts on iPhone or iPad

We hope this helps out, but if not, you can also contact Apple Support here: Get Support

Take care!

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Automation to change home screen at sunrise and sunset stopped working with 16.2

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