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Shortcus

Can you fix it so that the Lighter scene embedded in Siri Shortcus doesn't have to have the iPhone unlocked?  When I make a request for Siri Shortcus using Apple Watch or HomePod, for example, Siri Lighter does not make a light scene in Shortcus because it requires an unlocked iPhone.  And that's wrong!  I have Siri Shortcus programmed to play music and launch a Lighter scene.  The music will start playing, but unfortunately if the request was via Apple Watch or Homepod, the Lighter scene will not start!  I consider this to be a fundamental mistake.  Please fix it?  Thank you, Peter

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Hi Peter,
Thank you for using Lighter and thank you for your feedback.
I understand the problem of having to unlock your phone to use Lighter with Siri Shortcuts, and I know it's an even bigger issue with the watch, since your phone could be in another room.

There are several ways for developers to deal with Siri Shortcuts, one of them is to send the instruction to the app in the background without opening the app, but then the app has a limited time to execute the instruction. This means the scene would only run for a few seconds, and then the animation would stop.
I made the compromise of opening the app because this allows the full functionality (having the scene keep running in the background for as long as you want).

There is probably a way to do this just right by registering the app as a "media player", but I'm not sure Apple would allow this, since it's an unusual way to use their platform.
I'm currently looking into another big project for Lighter, I will investigate Siri Shortcuts after that.

I'd love to get more info on how you use Siri Shortcuts, so I can improve the feature even further. If you can email me at david@abetterhome.life and tell me which apps with shortcuts you like best, it would have an impact on the feature because I would understand more ways to use it.
Thanks!

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