Michal Ždanský There are a lot of single-purpose web services out there these days, and while they work great on their own, integration with other services sometimes struggles. Of course, many of them allow, for example, sharing elsewhere, RSS readers to Pocket, 500px to social networks and the like. But there aren't many ways to connect different services in such a way that they automatically perform tasks for you.
It serves precisely this purpose IFTTT. The name is abbreviated If This Then That (If this, then that), which perfectly describes the purpose of the whole service. IFTTT can create simple automated macros with a condition where one web service acts as a trigger and passes information to another service that processes it in a certain way.
Thanks to this, you can, for example, automatically back up tweets to Evernote, have SMS notifications sent to you when the weather changes, or send emails with the given content. IFTTT supports several dozen services, which I will not name here, and everyone can find interesting "recipes" here, as these simple macros are called.
The company behind IFTTT has now released an iPhone app that brings automation to iOS as well. The application itself has the same functions as the web one - it allows you to create new recipes, manage them or edit them. The splash screen (following a short intro explaining how the app works) serves as a list of activity records, either yours or your recipes. The mortar icon then reveals a menu with a list of your recipes, from where you can create new ones or edit existing ones.
The procedure is as simple as on the website. First you select the starting application/service, then the target service. Each of them will offer several types of action, which you can then adjust in more detail. If you don't know what services to connect, there is also a recipe browser from other users, which works like a small App Store. Of course, you can download all recipes for free.
The meaning of the iOS application is the connection with services directly on the phone. IFTTT can connect with Address Book, Reminders, and Photos. While the option for Contacts is the only option, Reminders and Photos have several different conditions on which to build interesting macros. For example, IFTTT recognizes newly taken photos with the front camera, rear camera or screenshots. Depending on the recipe, it can, for example, upload to the Dropbox cloud service or save to Evernote. Similarly, with reminders, IFTTT can record changes, for example, if a task is completed or newly added to a specific list. Unfortunately, Reminders can only work as a trigger, not a target service, you can't easily create tasks from emails and the like, which is what I was kind of hoping for when I installed the app.
That's not the only thing missing here. IFTTT could integrate other services on the iPhone, such as sending emails or SMS to friends. However, the biggest disadvantage of the application is its limitation, which is due to the closed nature of iOS. The application can only run in the background for ten minutes, recipes related to system functions will stop working after this time. For example, screenshots taken ten minutes after ending IFTTT will stop being uploaded to Dropbox. It is nice that the application also supports notifications that can be sent after each recipe is fulfilled.
it reaches a whole new way of multitasking and allows apps to run in the background all the time without having a major impact on the device's battery life. Then the recipes could work on the iPhone all the time regardless of the time. Because of the limited options, IFTTT for iPhone works more like a manager of created recipes, although some system macros can be useful, especially when working with photos.
If you've never heard of IFTTT before, it might be time to at least give the service a try, especially if you use various web services. As for the application for iPhone, it is completely free, so you can try experimenting without further ado.
Do you have any interesting recipes in IFTTT? Share them with others in the comments.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/ifttt/id660944635?mt=8″]
The app is very well connected with other channels on IFTTT, unfortunately, when background sync is enabled, without which it doesn't make much sense, it will reliably kill the battery in a couple of hours
Is the author a developer or just testing iOS 7?
Both
Please, does anyone really back up their tweets or was this just a shot in the dark?
Does the IFTTT SMS channel work for you in CR trn?