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Discover ControlPlane

ControlPlane brings context-aware computing to your portable Mac computer. It allows your computer to determine its context by gathering evidence from your environment (evidence sources), using flexible rules to make an educated guess (rules), and then performing arbitrary actions upon changing context (actions).

ControlPlane's concept of contexts is a generalization of a location, and encompasses more than just where your computer is. A context might represent what you are doing, or what else is going on around you.

Contexts can also be nested to provide fine-grained control. For example, your "Work" context might have two subcontexts called "Meeting" and "At Desk". If you imagine all your contexts as a tree, transitions between contexts involve "walking" that tree, leaving and entering a sequence of contexts.

Example Scenario

A particular USB mouse might only be used at your work, so its presence is a strong indicator that your context should be "Work". Furthermore, if the room is also dark, you're probably in a meeting, so your context should be "Meeting", which is a subcontext of "Work".

Similarly, a WiFi access point called "SmithNet" might be a good indicator that your context should be "Home", and being connected to a power adapter would also indicate that your context should be "At Desk", a subcontext of "Home".

See also

Configuring ControlPlane
Setting up ControlPlane's rules
Setting up ControlPlane's actions