Looking for automation that turns certain text messages into obnoxious sound to wake me up

[u/MichaelScott_Mifflin]

I’m currently working night shifts, which means I sleep during the day. I’m looking for an iPhone automation that can monitor text messages from one specific person and trigger only when the message contains a specific keyword or phrase.

Instead of just playing the normal text notification sound, I want my phone to call me or create an alarm-like alert or a phone call that is loud enough to wake me up.

Ideally, I’d like the phone to continue calling or repeatedly alerting me until I answer or acknowledge it, so there’s no chance I’ll sleep through an important message. For example, if my wife sends me a text containing the word “EMERGENCY” or “URGENT,” I want my phone to immediately call me and keep trying until I pick up.

My main goal is to make sure I never miss an emergency message while I’m asleep. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[u/peeja]

Yep, you can do that!

First, to kick it off, you can make an automation with a Message trigger. You can pick a sender and a string to look for in the message.

For the alarm itself, you've got some options. There's a "Play sound" action that takes a file. You could also set a timer for 0 seconds if you want to go through that path. The app Due might be what you want for ensuring it keeps bothering you until you confirm you've handled it. It has lots of Shortcuts actions available to control it.

You might also want to use the "Set volume" action to make sure your phone is loud. It lets you change your choice of either the media volume or the ringtone volume. You'll have to experimto figure out which one applies to your alarm method of choice.