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Recently, my brother was taking a long late-night bus ride home and fell asleep. He ended up two towns too far, needing a ride home in the middle of the night.

One could certainly set an alarm for x minutes, but on some transit, including a bus, those times aren't always exact. Is there a geofencing or GPS-based app that determines when you're in some radius of a given destination and wakes you?

It seems similar to this question and this one but neither is quite what is wanted.

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  • There are plenty of such apps (the term is "location based alarm"). Usually you can set the "area of destination" and say "wake me up when I'm less than 10 kilomters from my target", for example. I'm not using any of those – but I'd recommend first checking those marked with a "yellow star" (privacy friendly: no trackers). Also make sure they do not solely rely on GPS (might fail in some vehicles due to "no signal").
    – Izzy ♦
    Dec 3, 2019 at 0:17
  • @Izzy Awesome, thank you! I would accept that if you made it an answer.
    – Luke Sawczak
    Dec 3, 2019 at 0:31
  • Well, an answer here should recommend a specific software – my comment only points to a list. Feel free to answer your own question with what you tested and favored. And be welcome to check my other lists whenever you need another app :)
    – Izzy ♦
    Dec 3, 2019 at 0:50

3 Answers 3

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Llama and Tasker, described at your second link, could certainly accomplish this.

A slightly easier method for a newbie would be to use IFTTT. Something like this applet -- "If you enter an area, play music."

To create your own applet, go here after signing up and installing the app on your device.

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I use Automate to do something very similar - change a setting on the phone when arriving at a location.

This app, which is free to use, essentially provides a scripting language whereby you can set triggers and actions. The language also supports looping and branching so that you can do more than simple if a then b commands.

The app uses less power than I expected when I first installed it. The checking of location doesn't flatten your battery.

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Based on Izzy's list of location alerts and reminders, I tried out Alarme. It works like a charm(e). One drawback is that alarms deactivate after going off, so you need to turn them back on manually. If you commute home on transit every day and tend to fall asleep, that could be a pain. (I guess the alternative would be for it to reactivate only when you're outside of the range at which the alarm is triggered in the first place, or perhaps combining time and location so it only goes off on weekdays between 5 and 6 p.m. and so on.)

But you can at least save separate alarms, so you can just turn it on when you need it. It has the basic functionality I was looking for.

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