Automation
Scenes
Scenes are the app's automation engine. Four parts: when, what, when it's allowed to run, and the fine print.
A scene does something automatically when something happens. Turns on the lamp at dusk, switches off the coffee maker after an hour, raises the alarm when the door opens while you're away.
Scenes live under My Home. This is where the app's automation lives — Shelly uses the words "scene" and "automation" interchangeably, but in the app what you build is scenes.
The four parts
Every scene is made of the same four parts:
| Part | What it answers |
|---|---|
| When | What sets the scene off? |
| Do | What should happen? |
| Active time | When is the scene allowed to run? |
| More settings | Name, icon, notifications and details. |
When — the trigger
Conditions can be a time, a device's state, a button press, a sensor. Several conditions can be combined.
You can trigger on sunrise and sunset without Premium — "turn on at sunset" works fine on a normal account. What may require Premium is more advanced weather-forecast conditions, and most people don't miss those.
Do — the action
The action can switch devices on or off, set brightness, run a group, send a notification — or start another scene. That last one is how longer chains get built.
Active time — the time window
This is where you limit when the scene is allowed to run. A scene with the condition "motion in the hallway" that should only apply at night gets its time window here, not in the condition.
It's the most common reason a scene "doesn't work": it isn't running because it falls outside its time window.
More settings
Name, icon, and whether you want a notification when the scene runs. Pick names that say what the scene does, not when you happened to create it.
Scenes that don't run
Work through this in order:
- Is the scene enabled? A scene can be switched off without it being particularly obvious.
- Are you inside the Active time? See above. This is usually the answer.
- Is the device online? A scene meant to control an offline device does nothing.
- Is the condition based on a weather forecast? Advanced weather conditions may need Premium; sunrise and sunset don't.
- Are two scenes clashing? Two scenes driving the same device in opposite directions give you whatever the last one to run decided.
Scenes run in the cloud
A scene built on several devices runs via Shelly Cloud. If the internet is down, it doesn't run.
If you want automation that survives an internet outage, it has to live on the device itself — via the device's own web interface or scripts — not as a scene in the app. That's a real difference, and it's worth knowing before you build your lock or your alarm on a scene.