Scenes (situation presets)
A scene is a named preset that applies a bundle of actions at once — for example a Sleep, Exercise or Sick Day preset that switches your profile, sets a temporary target, toggles SMB and adds a care-portal note with a single tap, optionally for a set duration.
What is a scene
Instead of changing several things by hand every time a recurring situation comes up, you set them up once as a scene and activate it with one tap. A scene can bundle any of these actions:
Profile switch — switch profile and/or scale it by percentage (e.g. 70 %).
Temporary target — set a temp target (e.g. Activity, Eating soon, or a custom value).
SMB on/off — enable or disable super-micro-boluses while the scene is active.
Loop mode — change the running mode (e.g. to a more conservative mode).
Care-portal note — log an event (e.g. Exercise, Sickness) so it shows on the graph and in Nightscout.
A scene also has a duration — a fixed time (minutes/hours/days) or Indefinite (manual end) — and an end action that runs when it finishes: either a notification, or it can chain into another scene (for example Sick Day → Exercise).
Managing scenes
Open Manage → Scenes to see, create, edit, enable/disable and reorder your scenes.
Each scene card shows:
a checkbox to enable/disable the scene,
an icon and name,
a summary — “N actions, duration”, and the → chained scene if it chains into another one,
and three buttons: ▶ activate, ✏️ edit, 🗑️ delete.
Tap the + button to create a new scene.
Creating or editing a scene
Start from a template
To create a scene, tap the + button on the Scenes screen. The first step is Start from template: pick a ready-made scene for a common situation — Exercise, Sick Day, Sick Day — Vomiting, Sleep, Post-exercise Night, Pre-meal, Alcohol, Driving, Bathing, Luteal Phase, Hot Weather, Medical Procedure — or start from a Blank scene. Each template pre-fills the recommended actions and you can adjust everything in the following steps.
After you pick a template, its purpose is explained — when and why to use it — before you continue:
Step through the actions
The rest of the editor is a short step-by-step wizard. Each step is one action type with an “Include … in scene” switch — turn it on only for the actions you want this scene to perform, and leave the rest off.
Work through the steps with Next/Back: Profile switch, Temporary target, SMB, Loop mode, Care-portal note, then the duration, the end action (notify or chain into another scene), and finally the scene’s name and icon. Save when you are done. (To edit an existing scene, tap its ✏️ button — you go straight into these steps.)
Each step starts with a short explanation of what the action does. The steps look like this, here with the Exercise template:
Temporary target — pick one of your temp target presets:
SMB — enable or disable SMB while the scene is active:
Running mode — optionally change the loop mode:
Careportal — the event type and note to log:
Duration — how long the scene stays active; 0 means until you end it yourself:
Follow-up scene — optionally the scene that starts when this one ends:
Scene — the name and the icon. Press Finish to save:
Activating a scene
Activate a scene from the Scenes list (the ▶ button) or from the Scenes entry in the bottom navigation. In the Scenes sheet of the bottom navigation, each scene shows the same summary as in the Scenes list, and the pencil at the top of the sheet opens Manage → Scenes to create or edit your scenes.
If bolus protection is on, AAPS asks for it before a scene starts or ends. Changing a scene needs the settings protection instead.
Before anything is applied you get a confirmation that lists exactly what the scene will do, so you can review it:
If the scene chains into another one, the confirmation ends with → and the name of that follow-up scene, the same way it is shown in the Scenes list.
When you start the scene from the Scenes entry of the bottom navigation, the confirmation is a simpler dialog with the same list of actions. Press OK to activate:
After you confirm, the actions are applied and the active scene is shown at the top of the overview with an End Scene button. If the scene chains into another one, the banner also names that follow-up scene:
The scene’s actions stay in effect until:
its duration ends (the end action runs — a notification, or it chains into the next scene), or
you tap End Scene to end it manually. If the scene chains into another one, you get two choices: Skip to the follow-up scene (the active scene ends and the follow-up starts now), or End Scene (the active scene ends and the follow-up does not start).
A scene without follow-up only asks you to confirm:
Ending a scene reverts the changes it made (for example the profile switch and temp target it started).
While a scene is active, the profile and the target on the main screen carry a small scene icon when the scene set them. The Scenes sheet of the bottom navigation stays available to start another scene:
When the duration runs out on its own, the changes are reverted straight away and the banner changes to Scene ended with a Dismiss button. Dismissing only clears the banner from the screen — the scene itself is already over, so automation rules and a chained scene carry on without waiting for it.
Triggering scenes from Automation
A scene does not have to be started by hand — Automation can run it for you. When you add an action to an automation rule (Manage → Automation), the action picker has a Scenes category:
Run scene — activate a scene when the rule’s triggers fire (for example at a set time, when you arrive somewhere, or when glucose crosses a threshold).
Enable scene / Disable scene — make a scene available (or unavailable) without activating it.
Automation can also react to a scene: the trigger list includes a Scene trigger, so a rule can run only while a particular scene is active. Combined with a scene’s end action (revert, notify, or chain into another scene), this lets scenes start, follow on and finish automatically.
Scenes with Master/Client and a watch
The currently active scene is synchronized across all of your paired devices — activate it on one phone and the others show it too.
A paired client (AAPSClient) can also activate or end a scene: the request is sent to the master, which authors the confirmation and applies the scene on its own state. See Master ↔ Client control for how that works.
From a Wear OS watch
Scenes are available on a Wear OS watch as a Scene tile. Swipe to the Scene tile in the watch’s tile carousel (add it from the carousel’s tile list first if it isn’t there yet) and tap the scene you want to start:
The tile has four slots. By default each slot fills itself automatically with the next of your enabled scenes, in the order they have on the phone. To choose yourself, long-press the tile and open its settings: for each of the four slots you can keep Automatic, pin a specific scene, or select None to leave the slot empty. A slot pinned to a scene that has since been deleted or disabled shows Unavailable — pick another scene for it.
The watch then shows a confirmation — tap ✓ to activate, or swipe back to cancel:
Just like on a client, the master authors the confirmation and runs the scene; the watch only relays the request (via the client phone, if the watch is paired to a client).
While a scene is running — or its Scene ended banner is still showing on the phone — the tile shows an End button with the name of the scene under it. Tap it to end the active scene, or to clear the leftover banner, from your wrist.
If the running scene chains into another one, the tile also shows a Skip button with the name of the follow-up scene under it. These are the same two choices as on the phone:
End — the active scene ends. The confirmation tells you that the follow-up will not start.
Skip — the active scene ends and the follow-up scene starts now. The confirmation names both scenes.
The watch’s Loop Status screen also shows the active scene, the time it has left and its follow-up.