how to set up SMS texts that trigger a lock screen signal

October 21, 2018 2:33 PM

How can i get my Android phone to make some sort of attention getting ploy when it's on the lock screen if a text arrives from select phone numbers and/or containing key phrases?

I have an Android phone running version 7 on a Samsung Edge 7. I'm not much of a texter. I don't live on my phone, don't really do social media. I may not look at text messages for hours, even days.

Occasionally I need to have the phone bleep, bloop, flash or do something on the lock screen to let me know there's an important text waiting.

If I was an IT admin then this would look like: if SMS from phone # with text 'server down' then make a repeating noise or flash on the lock screen to get attention.

I'm not an IT person but have a similar need. The goal is to enable a select group of people to get my attention on short notice. It won't happen often but when it does I need that extra bit of noise to get me to check out the message.

I have Android Tasker but that seems like overkill. There's also IFTTT. What's the easiest most reliable way to do this? Thanks.

posted by diode to Technology (3 answers total)

You could use something like pagerduty or opsgenie.

The way it works is you'd have an email address for notifying you. I believe you can filter on text in the message subject or body as well. Some service can accept phone calls as well. Maybe they can receive sms and alert on that, but I'm not sure.

You install an app on your phone. The services allow you to setup rules on how you'd like to be alerted, re-alerted, and possibly escalate to someone else if you don't answer in time. You could have the app re-alert you after X minutes, then try SMS, then phone call, or whatever works for you.

There's a small monthly cost for this, but if it's important enough it's worth it. A good chunk of the internet is kept running by people who rely on services like these.

There are also third party SMS apps which you can install on your phone which are more configurable than the stock ones. I used to use one such app before pagerduty was a thing.
posted by DrumsIntheDeep at 2:57 PM on October 21, 2018

You could set your phone on do not disturb and also set up a group of contacts that override the dnd. I do this at night for my family. No sound unless one of my kids or my mother tries to text or call.
posted by AugustWest at 11:33 PM on October 21, 2018 [2 favorites]

If the Do Not Disturb mode is not good enough, there's an app called Automagic Premium ($3.90), which makes automation of these kind of things really easy, much easier than Tasker IMHO.
posted by Sharcho at 3:04 PM on October 22, 2018