Tasker is a powerful Android automation tool that can perform many advanced configuration and automation tasks. 1DM is a download manager which helps manage downloads and torrents. We are going to discuss how to use Tasker to start a download on the 1DM download manager. This should work similarly on other Android automation tools, like Automate and Macrodroid. We will also make the task dynamic so we can use it in tandem with other tasks. Tasker and 1DM are availabe on the Google Play Store.
I created a notification system to check updates for F-Droid apps I use with Tasker. Then I thought it would be neat to be able to download it directly from the download manager. F-Droid doesn’t recommend you download apps from their website. F-Droid cannot be used as a automatic updater for apps yet, so I’m using this as a automated notification system. It runs early every morning and If it finds an update for an app, I can then go to the F-Droid app to download it.
The task is simple. We only need an “Send Intent” action inside the task to get this done. Then we need to fill up some fields to relay information to the 1DM download manager.
NOTE: If you’re using the regular version (not the plus version) you should remove the plus on the package name.
Here are the details you need to fill. We can leave the rest fields default or empty.
Action -> android.intent.action.VIEW
Data -> Download Link
Package -> idm.internet.download.manager.plus (idm.internet.download.manager)
Class -> idm.internet.download.manager.Downloader
Target -> Activity
And that’s it. To check, use any download link to test if the download pop-up works. Once confirmed, we can move on to make it more dynamic to use with other tasks. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like on Tasker.
Making it dynamic
To make it usable within other tasks, we have to understand parent and child tasks. A parent’s task can pass through data through variables to tasks called inside it. The child’s task can pick up these variables and perform predetermined task.
For this instance, the download task we created before acts as a child task. Now, we exchange the link on the Data field with %par1 variable. Tasker will pass this variable down from parent task to a child task.
On the parent task, add a “Perform Task” action and pass the download link to %par1 text field. This variable sends the download link generated by the parent task to the child downloader task.
Conclusion
This is something only few people might use, especially who download a lot from the Internet.
