Automating Flipper Zero from Your Phone: Tasker, Shortcuts, and BLE Serial Control

The official Flipper Zero mobile app covers pairing, firmware updates, file management, and basic remote control over Bluetooth — we've covered that ground already. What it doesn't cover is triggering Flipper actions automatically, based on something else happening on your phone: arriving at a location, a scheduled time, an NFC tag you tap elsewhere, or a notification from another app. That's the gap automation tools like Tasker (Android) and Shortcuts (iOS) fill, talking to the Flipper over the same Bluetooth Low Energy serial connection the official app uses, just driven by your own triggers instead of a button tap.

How this actually works under the hood

The Flipper Zero exposes a BLE GATT serial service — effectively a wireless version of the USB CLI serial console covered in our Flipper CLI guide — that accepts the same text commands you'd type over a wired serial connection. The official mobile app is just one client of that service. Nothing stops another app, or a general-purpose automation tool capable of BLE GATT communication, from opening the same connection and sending commands. In practice, this means your automation path is: your phone's automation app connects to the Flipper's BLE serial characteristic, sends a CLI command string (the same commands covered in our CLI storage and scripting guides), and the Flipper executes it exactly as if you'd typed it over USB.

What you can realistically trigger

Anything exposed through the Flipper's CLI is fair game, which covers a surprising amount of ground:

• Playing back a saved Sub-GHz or IR signal on a schedule or location trigger — for example, firing a saved garage or gate signal automatically when your phone's location enters a geofence around home, without touching the Flipper at all.
• Launching a specific app on the Flipper remotely, useful if you've built a custom FAP app (covered in our custom app guide) that you want to kick off from an automation rather than navigating the Flipper's menu by hand.
• Reading back file or storage status for a notification pipeline — e.g., an automation that checks Flipper battery or storage state and alerts you if either is running low, since the Flipper itself has no proactive way to push that information to you.
• Chaining a Flipper action into a larger automation — a Shortcuts or Tasker flow that, say, arms a sub-GHz capture, waits, and then sends you the result, or combines a Flipper action with an unrelated smart-home trigger from Home Assistant (which the Flipper already integrates with directly, as covered elsewhere on this site — this phone-side path is a complementary, not competing, automation surface).

Setting it up on Android with Tasker

1. Tasker needs a plugin or its built-in Bluetooth LE actions (depending on your Tasker version) capable of connecting to a specific GATT service UUID and writing to a characteristic — check your Tasker version's Bluetooth LE action support before assuming this works out of the box.
2. Pair the Flipper with your phone once through normal Bluetooth settings, the same first step the official app requires.
3. Create a Tasker profile with your trigger of choice — location, time, an intercepted notification, an NFC tag scanned elsewhere, or a manual widget tap.
4. In the task's action, connect to the Flipper's BLE serial GATT characteristic and write your CLI command string as a UTF-8 encoded value, terminated the same way you'd terminate a line over a wired serial connection.
5. Test with a harmless, easily-observed command first (listing storage contents, or triggering the Flipper's screen/LED) before wiring up anything that fires a real Sub-GHz or IR signal automatically — a geofence trigger that's slightly too sensitive and fires your garage door signal while you're just driving past the house is a real, reported failure mode of this kind of setup.

Setting it up on iOS with Shortcuts

iOS Shortcuts has more limited native Bluetooth LE support than Tasker, and generally needs either a specific BLE-capable Shortcuts action (support varies by iOS version) or a small companion step through an automation-friendly BLE terminal app that itself exposes a Shortcuts action. The practical pattern is the same as Tasker — connect to the known GATT service and characteristic, write the command string — but expect more trial and error getting a reliable BLE GATT write action in your specific Shortcuts toolchain than on Android, where Tasker's plugin ecosystem is more mature for this kind of raw BLE work.

Security considerations

This is worth taking seriously, not just as a disclaimer. Automating a device that can replay captured RF signals means your phone's automation layer is now a secondary attack surface for anything your Flipper can trigger:

• Treat any automation that can fire a real-world action (a gate, a garage door, a relay) the same way you'd treat a smart lock automation — with deliberate, narrow triggers, not a broad "anytime near home" geofence that could misfire.
• Be aware that Bluetooth pairing alone isn't a strong access control — anyone who can trigger your automation app's flow (a stolen or unlocked phone, a maliciously crafted NFC tag if that's your trigger type) can trigger whatever your Flipper is wired up to do.
• Review the legal and ethical guidance in our Flipper Zero and the law coverage before building any automation involving signals you don't have clear authorization to capture and replay — automating a sketchy action doesn't make it less sketchy, just faster.

Phone-side automation is one of the more underused Flipper Zero capabilities precisely because it isn't surfaced anywhere in the official app's UI — it's a side effect of the Flipper exposing a genuinely open BLE serial interface rather than a locked-down proprietary protocol. Start with something low-stakes and observable, confirm the connection and command path work reliably, and only then wire it into triggers that actually matter.