Location Awareness

Overview

Location awareness gives your Aura the ability to understand where you are in the physical world. By knowing your location, your Aura can:

• Trigger rules when you arrive at or leave important places
• Provide location-specific information (like local weather)
• Add location context to its messages
• Filter rules to only fire when you're at certain places

Location is an optional sense - your Aura works without it, but enabling it unlocks powerful contextual capabilities.

Enabling Location

To enable location awareness:

1. Go to Library → Senses
2. Find Location and click Enable
3. Your browser or device will prompt for permission
4. Click Allow to grant access

Location Permissions

Location requires permission from your browser or device. The permission level affects what features are available:

Saved Locations

Saved locations are named places that your Aura can reference. They're the foundation of location-based rules.

Adding a Location

1. Go to Library → Locations
2. Click Add Location
3. Search for an address or place name, OR
4. Click on the map to drop a pin, OR
5. Click "Use Current Location" to use where you are now
6. Enter a name for the location (e.g., "Home", "Office", "Gym")
7. Optionally adjust the radius for geofencing
8. Click Save

Editing and Deleting

To modify a saved location:

• Edit: Click the location card, adjust the position, name, or radius, then save
• Delete: Click the trash icon on the location card, then confirm

Geofence Radius

The geofence radius determines how close you need to be for "arrive" triggers to fire and how far you need to go for "leave" triggers:

• Small (100m): Best for precise locations like a specific building
• Medium (250m): Good for general areas like a campus or shopping center
• Large (500m+): For larger areas like a neighborhood or park

If triggers fire too early or too late, adjust the radius. GPS accuracy varies, so some buffer is usually helpful.

Location-Based Rules

Location can be used as both triggers and conditions in behavior rules.

Arrive Triggers

Fire a rule when you enter a saved location's geofence:

• "When I arrive at Work" — Trigger a morning briefing
• "When I arrive at Gym" — Get a workout motivation message
• "When I arrive at Home" — Evening wind-down reminder

Arrive triggers have a cooldown to prevent repeat firing if you briefly leave and re-enter.

Leave Triggers

Fire a rule when you exit a saved location's geofence:

• "When I leave Home" — Morning commute check (weather, traffic)
• "When I leave Work" — End-of-day transition

Location as Conditions

Use location as a condition to filter when other rules should fire:

• Time trigger + "Only if at Home" — Morning briefing only fires if you're actually home
• Weather alert + "Not if at Work" — Skip weather alerts during work hours if you're inside

Use Cases

Here are some popular ways to use location awareness:

Morning Commute Helper

• Trigger: Leave Home (weekdays, between 6-9 AM)
• Message: Weather, traffic, and first meeting preview

Work Arrival Focus

• Trigger: Arrive at Work (weekdays)
• Message: Today's schedule, priority tasks, any urgent items

Gym Motivation

• Trigger: Arrive at Gym
• Message: Encouraging workout message, recovery status (if wearable connected)

Evening Transition

• Trigger: Leave Work
• Message: Day summary, commute info, evening weather

Travel Awareness

• Condition: Not at Home AND Not at Work
• Use: Modify other rules to behave differently when you're traveling

Privacy & Battery

Location is sensitive data. Here's how Aura handles it responsibly:

• You control sharing: Location is opt-in and can be disabled anytime
• Geofencing is local: Your device handles geofence detection locally
• Minimal transmission: Only geofence enter/exit events are sent, not continuous coordinates
• No tracking history: Aura doesn't store a log of everywhere you go

Battery Impact:

Modern geofencing is battery-efficient. Your device uses low-power location services that don't continuously poll GPS. Impact is typically minimal, but if you notice significant drain:

• Reduce the number of active location-based rules
• Increase geofence radius (larger zones trigger less frequently)
• Switch to "While Using" permission if background geofencing isn't needed

Troubleshooting

Location not updating

• Check that location permission is granted in your device settings
• Ensure location services are enabled on your device
• Try toggling location off and on in Aura settings

Triggers firing at wrong times

• GPS can be inaccurate indoors - try increasing the geofence radius
• Check that the saved location pin is in the right spot
• Add a time condition to filter out unwanted trigger times

Triggers not firing at all

• Verify you have "Always" location permission for background geofencing
• Check that the rule is enabled
• Review the cooldown - did this rule fire recently?
• Test by manually enabling/disabling the rule while at the location

Location shows wrong position

• Move outdoors or near a window for better GPS accuracy
• Disable and re-enable location to force a fresh position
• Some browsers have less accurate location; try a different browser