Magic Bands are the best technology that Disney has come up with, from being able to swipe into your room or pay for items, it has been incredibly useful and ingrained into any Disney trip. But oftentimes, it comes down to what to do with them afterward. If you are looking for a fun way to reuse your magic bands after a Disney trip, look no further. I will not take credit for this as it is based on the iPhone article by Mickeyblog. There may be an easier way to do this on Android-based phones but I have found this way that works and relatively easy to set up. Here is how to set up Disney magic on Android with your magic band.
Connecting Magic Band to Android
As stated above, there may be an easier way but wasnt able to find it last night. It does take a couple of steps to get it to work properly but it seems to work reliably. First off, you need to make sure that you can turn on NFC or Near Field Communication. For this, each Android has its own slightly different settings list, but it should be under connection settings. You can also search for NFC and make sure this is turned on. With most phones, this is turned on by default. For each of the Magic Bands, there is a unique tag that can be read when in close proximity to the reader.
Now the automation
Next was to create automation when the NFC tag was scanned. This is where the app Trigger comes in. This app allows you to create custom automation based on a variety of factors including NFC, Bluetooth changes, wifi triggers. This app is fairly straight-forward to set up. You will also need Trigger: tag reuse plugin. This will allow you to scan used tags, not generated through the app. When setting this app up, I denied it access to my contacts and photos because it is not needed for my goal. There have been no issues with using the app with the privileges denied.
How to set up the App
From the main screen, Click on the plus symbol at the bottom right of the screen
This will open up an Add a Trigger tab, click on the NFC which will bring up a blank configure NFC task window and click next.
From here, you should be on a tab for Add restrictions – if you want it to only be available under certain circumstances, you can adjust it here. After completing this, I did not add restrictions, click done.
Now you should find yourself at an Add one or more trigger page. For this purpose, I left it with one and clicked next.
Now the application options
You should have a Choose an Action window pop up, from here you can choose what the Magic Band does. I have it set to open Disney+, so go to applications and shortcuts. You could set it up for the Disney World app as well. After clicking on this, click the box that says open application and then next.
At this next window, you can set it to open the specific app with the configure actions pop up. Click the down arrow and scroll until you find the application you want to open and click it. Then click add to task.
Click next on the next screen
This will bring you to a switch tasks page unless you have multiple tags, then you can click done.
Now it is all set up and it will test scanning your magic band. When you scan it, it may come up with an error that it can not fully read it, but it will still work. It doesn’t need to read it, only to be triggered to open up the app when scanned.
And Voila Disney magic on Android using the Magic Band to control your phone, so to speak
I have not been able to find a way to create automation without using 3rd party apps. I have blocked privileges to minimize the privacy issues but can not fully vouch for these apps. No security concerns were found when researching the apps prior to installation. I will note that this was done using the free version of the app, not paid. I give all the credit to MickeyBlog for coming up with this but wanted to find a way to add Disney magic to Android.
Is this something you would set up? Let us know in the comments below.