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Help · The Anchor

Let something else drop it for you.

Furlough for iPhone · four recipes, nothing new underneath them

Drop Anchor is already a Shortcuts action, a Control Center button, a widget tap, and — since the Anchor learned a Focus Filter — something a Focus can trigger too. So "when I arrive at the library, drop anchor," "at 10 PM, drop anchor," and "when Sleep Focus turns on, drop anchor" are each one automation away already. Nothing below is a new feature; it is four exact recipes for automations built from what already exists.

Every one of these drops the anchor, and none of them lifts it. A Shortcut that could lift the anchor is a Shortcut you could delete at 9:59 PM. Only your paired tag ever does that — see Using the Anchor for why.

At a time of day

  1. Open Shortcuts › Automation › + › Create Personal Automation › Time of Day.
  2. Pick the time, and the days if you only want it on some of them — 10 PM on school nights, say.
  3. Add Action, search Furlough, and choose Drop Anchor.
  4. Turn off Ask Before Running, so it fires on its own.

When you arrive somewhere

  1. Same start: Automation › + › Create Personal Automation › Arrive.
  2. Pick the place — home, the office, wherever you want the anchor already down before you get there.
  3. Add Drop Anchor the same way as above, and turn off Ask Before Running.

An Arrive automation needs your location while it watches for you, which iOS asks permission for on its own, separately from anything Furlough does.

When a Focus turns on

This one is not built in Shortcuts at all — a Focus Filter lives in Settings, because it is Apple's mechanism rather than an automation.

  1. Open Settings › Focus › the Focus you want it tied to — Sleep, Work, or one you made.
  2. Focus Filters › Add Filter › Furlough.
  3. Turn on Drop the Anchor, the one thing there is to configure, and tap Add.

Turning the Focus back off does not lift the anchor — only the tag does, the same as everywhere else in Furlough.

When you leave somewhere

  1. Same start, once more: Automation › + › Create Personal Automation › Leave.
  2. Pick the place — leaving the office at the end of the day is the obvious one.
  3. Add Drop Anchor, and turn off Ask Before Running, as above.

Not yet run on a phone. These steps are written from how Shortcuts automations and Focus Filters work, not from a phone that has run every one of them. If a step reads differently on yours, that is the thing worth writing in about.

More: Using the Anchor · All help · support@furloughapp.com