Every so often a piece of software comes along that just refuses to die, thank goodness. How-To Geek has a lovely piece this week about still using Tasker after all these years, and let me tell you, it took me right back.

Tasker is an Android automation app, and it's been around for more than a decade now, still going strong with an active developer and a community that genuinely cares. You set up rules: if this happens, do that. When my phone connects to my car's Bluetooth, it starts my music and turns up the media volume. When I get home and join the Wi-Fi, it silences the ringer. When the battery runs low, it kills the fancy stuff and switches to dark mode. My phone takes care of itself, which is exactly how technology should behave, in my opinion. Working for you quietly in the background, not demanding your attention every five minutes.

I've been using Tasker for a good long while now, long enough that I remember when 1GB of data a month was unthinkable, so the idea that my phone could make decisions on its own felt like something out of a sci-fi movie I'd have rented from Blockbuster. And here we are, over a decade into Tasker's life, and the project is still actively updated. That is rarer than it should be. Most apps from that era ended up as gravestones in the Play Store, abandoned by developers who moved on. I've watched a lot of favorites go that way over the years.

Now, I won't pretend Tasker is easy. It has a learning curve like a hiking trail switchback. The interface has improved over the years but it still assumes you're willing to experiment, break things, and try again. If you want to understand what's happening under the hood with modern Android automation, my colleague Marcus Pitts writes wonderful deep-dives on that sort of thing, and I always come away smarter.

The community deserves real credit too. There's a whole ecosystem of people sharing profiles you can import, so you don't have to build everything from scratch. Want your phone to read texts aloud when you're driving? Someone has probably already made that. It reminds me of the old dial-up forum days, when strangers helped strangers just because they could.

Android itself has built routines and Modes and the like straight into the system over the years, and maybe it's just me, but some of that feels awfully familiar to anyone who's spent time in Tasker. I can't prove the inspiration, only the resemblance. Those built-in tools are fine for the basics. But if you want real control, the nitty-gritty, "when my calendar says I'm in a meeting AND it's a weekday AND I'm not on my home Wi-Fi, mute everything" kind of control, Tasker is still my favorite, and in my book it still holds the crown.

Over a decade of one app staying alive and useful. In this business, that's practically a fairy tale. If you've got an Android phone and you've never tried it, it's worth a look. Be patient with it, give yourself a weekend, and start with something simple like the Bluetooth-in-the-car trick. You'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

As for me? I keep adding to my profile list a little more every year, usually around my birthday. Consider it my little tradition. This year I finally automated the "goodnight" routine, dimming the screen and silencing everything at bedtime sharp. The phone knows when bedtime is better than I do, apparently.