IFTTT has advertised itself as being the “glue that holds the internet together” for a while now. When it first came along, it was the first widespread service that you could connect internet services to do some really cool things. Some were simple like re-sharing a Facebook post on Twitter (or the other way round), which admittedly you can do from the basic Facebook and Twitter settings or a tool like Buffer. But then there are features like saving all your Instagram images to Dropbox or pinging your phone with an alert when a certain account tweets (I use this with deal account on Twitter). However, now IFTTT has evolved further to change from recipes to applets.
What are Applets?
Previously IFTTT had recipes which followed a simple “if [this trigger] then [do that action] – i.e. If I tweet, then post it on Facebook. Now there are applets which allow you to still do your old recipes, but also open more possibilities. These require using the new API from IFTTT, but open up the possibility of multiple actions being triggered by a single event. So image pressing a button and it triggers your morning home automation settings (including lighting levels, playlist in Spotify and more).
Another thing to note is that the “Do” apps are now gone and instead you use the IFTTT app.
Why Has IFTTT Made This Change?
IFTTT has faced some competition from Zapier for a while, and now there is also Microsoft’s Flow which also links services together. However, more importantly than these two factors, are the advances in home automation and voice assistant services. Looking at the example in IFTTT’s announcement blog post, you see Alexa (from the Amazon Echo) triggering a lock up sequence at night.
In the past, this would have required several triggers all at once and several recipes, now, with a new API, this can be done in one.
Some favorite new ideas:
Keep My Profile Pictures in Sync
This is a handy one for all you social media pros out there. Make sure you don’t have an out of date profile picture by syncing your Twitter and Facebook profile pictures.
Check it out here.
Change My Android Wallpaper to NASA’s Image of the Day
One of the really cool things about Android is its customization and openness (okay that’s two things, but they kind of go hand-in-hand). So with IFTTT you can have your wallpaper change to the latest pictures from NASA. And let’s be honest, that’s a cool thing to do, because space.
Check it out here.
Use Siri to Create Todoist Reminders
I use Todoist as it’s cross platform, highly scale-able, looks good and works well. But on iOS, you can’t set voice reminders…well with a little IFTTT magic, you can. You can also do this using Google Assistant or Alexa as well.
Check it out here.
What about you? Do you have any favorite IFTTT recipes?
Please share them in the comments below…
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