Whats the difference between play steps, turn on from desktop, and turn on from cloud?

In the realm of automation, navigating the various execution options can significantly impact the efficiency and performance of your workflows. Let's delve into the distinctions between Play Steps, Turn On From Desktop, and Turn On From Cloud to streamline your automation processes.

In the world of automation, Play Steps serves as a vital tool for testing and running scripts. By initiating Play Steps, users can execute their automation directly from their desktop, with the browser actively open. This feature proves beneficial for users relying on webhooks data for testing purposes.

The functionalities of Turn On From Desktop and Turn On From Cloud offer distinct advantages in the automation workflow. These options execute tasks headlessly unless configured otherwise in the advanced settings. While schedules and lists operate based on time triggers, other events like webhooks initiate actions when specific events occur.

Understanding the nuances between running automation from one's desktop versus leveraging cloud servers is essential. Turn On From Desktop requires the local machine to be active during trigger events, while Turn On From Cloud offers the flexibility of executing tasks remotely, eliminating the need for the local machine to be powered on.

So there are a couple of different options in the top here. We have play steps, and then we have turn on from desktop and turn on from cloud. So clicking play steps is going to run your automation from your desktop immediately with the browser open. If you have webhooks being used, it would use any of the webhook data that you save to test with.

Um, PlaySteps is definitely more of the testing version, although for a lot of people using the list trigger, that may be all you're doing. And that's for scraping flows kind of specifically. Um, but anyways, PlaySteps runs this from your desktop with the browser. Um, with whatever data you're telling it to run with.

If it was a webhook, you saved it. If it's a list or schedule, you told it how it's going to run. Um, that's how that will work. Turn on from desktop and turn on from cloud are going to run, um, they're going to run headless unless you tell it to run otherwise in your advanced settings. Um, whenever your trigger is met.

So schedule and lists are all based on time. Those are like hourly, daily, weekly, things like that. Other triggers such as webhook or any of the apps are based on events like new rows being added, um, and things like that. So to go over, turn on from desktop quickly, what that's going to do is this is going to mean any time your automation has one of those events happen, depending on your trigger, or if it's a schedule, anytime the time is met.

It's going to immediately start running your automation from your desktop without a browser again, unless you have some other setting in your screen settings, if it's done from cloud, then it's going to run from our cloud servers again, without a browser. Um, and for that, your computer does not need to be on.

If your automation is turned on from desktop, then whenever your trigger happens, when the event happens, or when the time is met, your desktop computer must be on with the task magic app open.