Preparing the phone for work

Automation scenarios work with exactly what is visible on the phone screen: they look for buttons, tap them and scroll the feed. Anything that covers the screen or changes its state - a display going dark, a rotation, an update popping up - throws a scenario step off and turns into a failed task. Half an hour spent preparing each handset saves hours of error triage later.

Screen and lock

The most common reason a task breaks off is that the phone simply fell asleep.

• Settings -> Display -> Screen timeout: set the highest value (or "Never" if that option exists).
• In the developer section, turn on "Stay awake": the screen will not go dark while the phone is plugged into power or into a computer.
• It is best to remove the screen lock entirely. If you keep a PIN or a pattern, remember: the moment the phone locks, the scenario sees the lock screen instead of the app and the task fails.
• Turn off the screen saver, Always-on display and any battery-saving modes that force the display off.

Orientation and animations

All scenarios assume portrait orientation. Before a scenario starts, the app puts the phone into portrait and zeroes out the system transition animations itself - this happens every time and needs nothing from you.

Even so, it is better to turn auto-rotate off by hand: if the handset is lying awkwardly on the desk and manages to flip the screen between steps, some taps will land in the wrong place. Check as well that one-handed mode is off and that interface scaling is not set to some unusual value.

Battery and background restrictions

The Xiaomi, OPPO, Realme, Vivo, Honor and Samsung skins love unloading apps from memory. For a farm that means the social app will close in the middle of a scenario.

1. Open Settings -> Apps and find TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and their clones, if any are installed.
2. Lift the battery restrictions for each of them: the option is called "Battery" -> "Unrestricted" or "Power saving" -> "No restrictions".
3. While you are there, allow autostart and background activity (on MIUI it is "Autostart", elsewhere "Background activity").
4. Do exactly the same for the Siesta input agent: if the system unloads it, text input and screen capture stop working.
5. Turn off the phone's global battery saver - it dims the screen and cuts background activity regardless of per-app settings.

Updates and pop-ups

Any system window on top of the app breaks a scenario step. The app closes some of them itself (the system charger check window and the input method warning, for example), but do not treat that as insurance against every window there is.

• In Google Play, open Settings -> Network preferences -> Auto-update apps and choose "Don't auto-update apps". Otherwise Play updates TikTok in the middle of the night, changes the interface and the scenario stalls.
• Turn off automatic downloads of system updates.
• Go through the installed apps and dismiss every welcome screen, tour and permission request by hand, once, so that they do not pop up during a task.
• Turn off the skin's system tips and promotional notifications if there is such a setting.

Language, time and region

Keep one interface language across every phone in the farm. Scenarios locate screen elements partly by button labels, so a zoo of Russian, English and, say, Spanish across handsets gives unpredictable results. Russian and English both work.

Leave date and time on automatic (network-provided). A wrong clock on the phone breaks account sign-ins and the social apps themselves. It makes sense to align the time zone and region with the geo of the accounts and the proxies you hand out to the devices.

Apps and accounts

Social apps and account sign-ins are on your side. Lusiesta Studio has no account manager, no credential storage and no automatic login: you sign in by hand, and the app then works with a social network that is already authorized. If a scenario runs into a login screen, the task ends honestly with a message that the account is not signed in.

• Install the apps you need in advance - by hand, with the "Install APK" button or with an install task. Clones for several accounts on one phone are covered in Installing apps and clones.
• Sign in to the accounts and go through the first run: dismiss the welcome screens, allow or deny notifications, grant access to the gallery.
• Install the Siesta input agent with the "Initialize agent" button in the right-hand panel and make sure its accessibility service and input keyboard are enabled. Warmup and publishing tasks will not start without the agent. The details are in The Siesta input agent.

Do not keep personal photos and videos on farm phones. Before every upload the publishing engine clears the device gallery and puts a single clip from the queue there - that is part of normal operation and cannot be turned off. A phone in a farm should be a working tool, not an archive.

Checklist before the first task

1. The screen does not go dark, the lock is removed, "Stay awake" is on.
2. Auto-rotate is off and the phone is in portrait.
3. Battery optimization is lifted for the social apps and for the Siesta agent, battery saver is off.
4. Auto-update for apps in Google Play is disabled.
5. The interface language is the same on every handset, date and time are automatic.
6. The social apps are installed, the accounts are signed in, the welcome screens are dismissed.
7. The Siesta agent is installed, its accessibility service and keyboard are enabled.
8. The device is visible in the grid with a live preview and its device number in place.

Once the checklist is done you can create your first task - how that works is described in Creating and running tasks.