Troubleshooting
Three places answer almost everything, and they answer different questions:
- Problems (bottom bar) — what the graph is. A permission, a bad wire, a dangling reference.
- Console (bottom bar) — what a run did. Set the filter to All to see the per-node trace.
- Setup → Permissions — what the phone allows.
The macro never fires
Section titled “The macro never fires”Is its switch on? Arming is what registers triggers. Editing an armed macro re-arms it; that is normal.
Is there a warning on the trigger’s card? A missing permission is the commonest cause, and most of these fail silently at the platform level:
| Trigger | Needs | Symptom without it |
|---|---|---|
| Geofence | Location, and “Allow all the time” | Never registered. Nothing logged |
| Message / Notification | Notification access | Nothing arrives |
| Picture Saved | Photos | Nothing arrives |
| NFC Tag | NFC switched on | Nothing arrives, and never while the screen is off or locked |
| SMS Received | Receive texts | Nothing arrives |
Is it a schedule that runs late? Grant Alarms & reminders. Without it Android is free to batch your alarm with other work.
Does it stop firing overnight? Grant Unrestricted battery use, and check whether your phone’s manufacturer adds a layer of its own — see Running in the background.
Did it stop after a reboot? Same grant. Enabled macros re-arm on boot, and that path is where the exemption matters most.
A node runs and does nothing
Section titled “A node runs and does nothing”Open the Console with the filter on All. A node that ran leaves a → node line;
if there is no such line, the run never reached it.
Three common causes:
A permission the platform does not report as an error. Launch App, Send Message and the Ask the user dialogs are dropped outright by Android when started from the background without Draw over other apps. Nothing throws. Brightness, Screen timeout and Auto-rotate need Modify system settings and report “did nothing” without it.
A reference to something that has been deleted. A variable, a macro, a smart-home hub or a mail account. The node reports that nothing happened; Problems says which.
A value that arrived as nothing. The in and out lines in the console carry the
data that actually crossed each wire. A blank where you expected a number is usually a
JSON path that matched the wrong field, or a value node answering null because its grant
is missing.
The run stops halfway
Section titled “The run stops halfway”At an If. Check which branch fired. The console’s → node lines say what ran after
it; an unwired branch simply ends that pass.
At a Stop Macro. That is what it does — it halts the current chain.
At a node with an error. A blocked node is quarantined, and only it: the console logs one summary line and everything not named still runs. Problems says what was blocked and why.
After a Wait Until. That node’s Carry on now branch fires immediately and its When the time comes branch fires later. If you wired the wrong one, the second half never runs. Wiring one branch into the other is an error and Problems reports it.
A drop is refused
Section titled “A drop is refused”The types do not match and no conversion exists. Every primitive pair converts, and anything converts to text — but nothing converts to a struct and nothing autocasts into a list. Making one of those is a visible node’s job: Break Struct, Split text, Read from JSON.
You also cannot connect an execution port to a data port.
An integration says it cannot connect
Section titled “An integration says it cannot connect”Hue — the bridge’s certificate rotates on a firmware update. The hub detail screen offers Trust new certificate, showing both fingerprints. Only accept it if you reset or replaced your bridge.
Home Assistant / MQTT — check the address includes the scheme and the port. An
http:// address is refused for an MQTT broker, because pasting the broker’s dashboard
URL is the likeliest mistake that field sees.
Mail — you almost certainly need an app password, not your account password. See Mail. Outlook.com and Microsoft 365 cannot be added at all.
AI — a self-hosted base URL must include the scheme; unlike other URL fields it does not guess. OpenRouter and self-hosted servers must name a model id.
A plugin’s nodes are missing
Section titled “A plugin’s nodes are missing”Open Setup → Plugins. A plugin that is merely installed contributes nothing until you enable it, and that screen lists any node that was refused, with the reason.
A plugin re-signed by a different developer lands back disabled.
Nothing here helped
Section titled “Nothing here helped”Open the failing entry in the console and use its copy button — it carries the run id, which is the only thing that untangles two interleaved runs — and file it on GitHub.