Siri Shortcuts for Lotus Bud Meditation Timer

You can now create shortcuts to run in the Shortcuts app on iOS 12.
I've made a couple to get you started.

Lotus Bud: Meditation START 🧘‍♀️ https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/1e845d95aa6a4a12b0b97065fb0c8861

Lotus Bud: Meditation FINISH 🙏 https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/75c0e006456948e1bc6af82b77015182

The start shortcut makes sure volume is on (also check your mute switch), turns off internet (reduces distractions) and turns off Do Not Disturb (makes sure you get your notifications).

The finish shortcut resets your internet to make sure your Wifi and Cellular are turned back on. Don't forget to run this after you've completed your meditation.

You can also customize your won Shortcuts with Lotus Bud, for example you could start a relaxing music playlist when you start your meditation, if you're into that sort of thing.

More to come, and keep an eye out for shortcuts for Lotus Bud Mindfulness Bell too.

Random

Your brain is a wonderful pattern recognition machine, and will anticipate when the next bell occurs if they come at regular intervals. In order to support a mindfulness practice, the bell is always randomized. That way it's harder for your brain to anticipate when it will ring next.

However in Lotus Bud Mindfulness Bell does allow you to influence the timing. Using the Bell Timing slider will make the random bells closer together by sliding it to the left and further apart by sliding it to the right.

This allows you to tweak Lotus Bud Mindfulness Bell for your own usage but keep you on your toes while you pursue your practice.

Don't go force quitting that app!

Lotus Bud Mindfulness Bell relies on notifications to deliver you mindfulness alerts randomly throughout the day. In order to do this Lotus Bud has to wake up in the background periodically to schedule the next set of notifications.

There is something you might be doing that will prevent Lotus Bud from working properly.

Never swipe Lotus Bud away in the app switching interface!

Don't swipe Lotus Bud away in the app switching interface. Why is this important? Apple includes this feature for one reason only. If an app is misbehaving and won't respond, or keeps crashing on you, this is a tool to help reset some things in the app so you can give it a fresh start and try again. You should NEVER do this to an otherwise well behaved app! It is a troubleshooting feature only. You may have heard from some of your friends or family that you should just do this to every app when you're done using it to save battery. This is a myth that has been spread by well-intended people, but it's simply not true. In fact it can make your battery life worse. Apps on your phone don't behave like apps on a computer, they don't need to be closed to stop them from running. By default if you do not see them they are not running. They can ask for special permission to do some things in the background while you're not using them, but iPhone is in charge of making sure when it's ok to do this.

There are some very smart people that have looked into this and have written an article about it: Closing Apps to Save Your Battery Only Makes Things Worse! Apple has also confirmed that there is no need to force close apps (under normal circumstances).

These special tasks that Lotus Bud does is to schedule the next ten or so mindfulness reminders. When this happens Lotus Bud gets a chance to wake up, schedule a few more bells, and then it goes back to sleep. All of this happens in a fraction of a second and uses almost no battery at all.

So to keep getting your mindfulness reminders don't close Lotus Bud from the app switcher.

Keep Lotus Bud visible in this app switcher and you should keep getting notifications.

For other tips on how to make sure Lotus Bud will work the best see here. 

Lotus Bud Mindfulness Bell 2.2 Available

Update now!

Lots of new stuff and fixes in this release! I work hard to address all reported issues, thank you for being patient. Please tell your friends about Lotus Bud Mindfulness Bell and leave a review or rating on the App Store.

NEW

• Added new Bell Timing feature under settings, just slide to the left to make the bells ring closer together, to the right to make them further apart.
• Added up and down swipe to turn bell on and off.
• Added triple tap gesture to toggle bell on and off.

CHANGES

• Improved switch animations and interactivity.
• When creating a new Quiet Hour, it defaults to every day, instead of just the current day of the week.
• Disbaled the ability to turn auto-off on if Quiet Hours in-app purchase is purchased. (these features overlap and do not work together nicely)
• Minor visual tweaks for iPad.

FIXES

• Fixed a bug that could cause bells to ring during quiet hours.
• Fix for bug that could cause switch to be unusable until animations settled.
• Fix for bug that could make On/Off labels to swing around switch if you toggled the switch on and off a lot.
• Fix for race condition that could cause app to be terminated because it didn't finish quickly enough after being worken up in background.
• Fix for bug that could cause multiple bells to ring when screen was unlocked.
• Fixed a bug that prevented you from turning on auto-off, if the bell was not yet turned on.

Still Not Hearing That Bell?

So you've tried all the steps in this guide to make sure all your settings are set correctly to hear the bell, but you're still not hearing them?

Check That Lotus Bud Appears in the Notification Center

Tap the home button so you can see the apps on your home screen. Look for the Settings app.

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Look for the gray gears icon.

Tap on Notification Center.

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Look for Lotus Bud in the list and tap on it to get details.

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Apps are install order, so Lotus Bud will likely be towards the bottom unless you reordered.

Sounds should be ON, the other recommended settings shown here.

Banners, Sounds, Show in Notification Center and Show on Lock Screen should all be on.

Reinstall Lotus Bud

If you do not see Lotus Bud in the Notification Center at all, something went wrong while Apple installed the app. In that case you may need to delete the app, restart your device and reinstall from the App Store.

If these steps don't resolve the issue please contact me so we can troubleshoot further.

Version 2.1

• Now you can get reminded to meditate every day.
• Share share a note (notes requires the Intention & Reflection in-app purchase) via Mail, Messages, Airdrop, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Send a support request from within the app.
• Smoother animations when starting and ending a meditation
• Updated the Notes and Intention icons.
• Fixed a bug that caused typing to be slow in notes.
• Other minor bug fixes and enhancements.

Lotus Bud Mindfulness Bell for iPad and iPhone 2.0

• Completely rewritten and redesigned for iOS 7
• Continuous Mindfulness Bell Scheduling
• Quiet Times to silence the bell when appropriate as an in-app purchase

Lotus Bud Mindfulness Bell Completely Redesigned!

Propel your meditation practice from the cushion into the world.  Modeled after a practice in Buddhist monasteries, Mindfulness Bells are a powerful practice to remind you of your intention to be mindful. Activate the Mindfulness Bell and it sends you gentle reminders of your intention for your practice through the day.

Turn it on, then as you're going about your day, a bell and notification will remind you to be mindful of what you're doing at a random intervals between half an hour and an hour and a half. Great for reminding yourself of your mindfulness practice while at work, commuting, at school.

New in Lotus Bud Mindfulness Bell 2.0:

• Completely rewritten and redesigned for iOS 7
• Continuous Mindfulness Bell Scheduling
• Quiet Times to silence the bell when appropriate as an in-app purchase

There's no need to re-open the app every day. Thanks to new features in iOS 7 we're able to schedule and keep on scheduling mindfulness bells without needing to re-open the app. Just launch once, turn the mindfulness bell on and you're good to go.

You want the Mindfulness Bell reminding you to be mindful, but not all times are the right time to do that. Now you can schedule Quiet Times when you need a the Mindfulness Bell to be silent. Schedules can be created for any day or days of the week and for any time with an in-app purchase.

Don't Miss That Bell

Before you start your meditation, there are a few settings you should double check on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Most of these you can easily check in Control Center (swipe up from the bottom edge to view).

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Mute Switch

On the side of your device make sure you're not on mute. If you have the switch setup for rotation lock on an iPad, make sure mute isn't turned on in Control Center.

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Volume

This volume slider does nothing to control notification sounds.

You would think this volume slider in would control volume across your whole device. However this isn't the case.

You really need to open up the Settings app and tap on "Sounds"

Go to Settings>Sounds>Ringer and Alerts

Under "Ringer and Alerts" you will see a slider. This is the volume control for notifications and your phone ringer. If the "Change with Buttons" switch is enabled, this will change the bell volume, but only whenever other audio, including music, videos, games and podcasts, are not playing.

If you see this while pressing the volume buttons you're all good.

The easiest way to tell the difference if the volume buttons are adjusting the Ringer and Alerts volume is the icon shown when pressing the buttons. If the icon is a bell, you know you're adjusting the Ringer and Alerts.

If the icon is a speaker, you are adjusting the playback volume.

If you see this while pressing your volume buttons, you should should adjust the "Ringers and Alerts" volume in Settings App > Sounds.

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Do Not Disturb

Turn Do Not Disturb Off

Make sure Do Not Disturb is not turned on. This is may be counterintuitive, but Do Not Disturb will interfere with Lotus Bud. It will prevent notifications from making a sound, vibrating or turning on the screen. When you have this on you're telling your device don't disturb me no matter what, so if you wake up early to meditate and Do not Disturb is still turned on from the night before, remember to turn it off.

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Advanced Tip Airplane Mode

Turn Airplane Mode On

So what's a meditator to do if they want to have minimal interruption during their meditation without silencing the meditation bell? Airplane Mode. Airplane mode will turn off all internet access. This will prevent any external push notifications from coming in, text messages, email, phone calls and any other notifications from the outside world will wait until you're done meditating. Any local notifications can still be heard, like the ones Lotus Bud uses to let you know when your meditations done. This won't stop all interruptions from your phone, but it'll make it signifigantly better. If some apps are still regularly chiming in you can turn off sounds for them in Apple's Settings app in the Notification Center.

Be sure to turn Airplane Mode back on after after you've finished your meditation.

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Be Mindful of Sound

Reducing distractions is all well and good, but this is meditation practice, and annoyances are great fodder for meditation practice. There are also always going to be external sounds and movements that you can't control. Make these a part of your practice by being mindful of sound. This is an important practice whether an "interuption" is internal or extrenal. Holding those experiences lightly and meeting them non-reactivity is a very powerful practice.

To Summarize:

• Turn off your mute switch
• Turn up the volume
• Turn OFF Do Not Disturb
• Turn ON Airplane Mode
• Be mindful of sound

Still Not Working?

After you've tried all of the steps above and you're not hearing the bell it might be time to dig a little deeper. [Don't close the app either!]

Lotus Bud - Meditation Timer 2.0.2 Now for iPad

Lotus Bud Meditation Timer 2 is now optimized for iPad! Sync your meditation settings and sessions with the in-app purchase, so you can review your notes and intentions from any of your iOS devices.

We're not done yet, we're continuing to work on new features and will be adding some long awaited features to Lotus Bud - Mindfulness Bell