There's a little app called IFTTT that can change your life.
Tech can get pretty tedious, and if anything, it's getting more tedious instead of less. We take pictures with our phones, then edit them in Instagram where they're automatically shared on Twitter and Facebook, but then would have to upload them again if we wanted to share them on another network. Then, we save those pictures to Dropbox or back them up to our computers so they don't get lost. And that's just for pictures of your lunch.
There's no need to wade through countless junk emails or have to duplicate everything you share online to make sure all of your friends can see it. You shouldn't check Etsy or Craigslist daily to see if the thing you want to buy is available, and you shouldn't even have to ask Siri if it's going to rain. Instead, you should enlist one of the coolest free tools to help you: IFTTT.
Launched in beta back in 2010, IFTTT is the ultimate simple automation service built around a simple sentence: if this then that. If this thing happens, do this.
Stop for a moment and think of all the things you could do based on that one phrase. If it's going to rain, send me an SMS. If I tag my grandma in a photo, email it to her since she doesn't use Facebook. If my package is out for delivery, email me. And the list goes on and on.
Whether you've already been relying on IFTTT or haven't heard of it before now, chances are there's more ways you can put it to use that you haven't thought of yet. It's simple to use — you literally just pick the thing that happens first, and then pick what happens if that first thing happens. Set it, and forget about it. There's a brand-new free iPhone app for IFTTT that lets you use your iOS photos, contacts, and reminders as IFTTT this triggers to let you do more with the data on your phone, in addition to the stuff you can already do with it online. But even online, IFTTT is insanely valuable. Here's some of the best ways to put it to use:
Backup All Your Stuff
Even if you keep your computer and phone backed up, you're likely not backing up all the stuff you share online. Sure, much of it is inconsequential, but you'd likely want to keep at least some of the photos you've put on Facebook and Instagram if they happened to accidentally lose them. And the great articles you read in Pocket will quickly be tough to find if you don't have a place you're keeping them after they're archived.
With IFTTT, though, none of this has to be difficult to do. You can set it to backup all of your stuff to Dropbox, automatically, so your stuff will be protected and you'll never even have to think about it. You could have it save your contacts, archived articles, and bookmarks to Evernote, all the pictures you're uploaded and tagged in everywhere to Dropbox, and all the emails you send to your significant other archived as PDF. You could even backup all of your social media updates to Evernote, so you can go back and see everything you've written online.
Sure, you might not want all of the stuff, but why make yourself have to think about what's really important? Just set it all to backup, and then forget about it.
Social Networking Without Being Social
Social networking can get quite frustrating when your friends are spread about between a half-dozen different services. Plus, you might want to post somewhere else entirely — on your blog, perhaps — but you know no-one will even see what you write without it being on Facebook and Twitter.
Here's what you have to do. Figure out where you want to post by default, then use IFTTT to publish it everywhere. There's never a reason to have to copy and paste to post to Twitter, App.net, and Facebook at the same time — let IFTTT do the dirty work for you. Just set up a recipe to post to the other networks whenever you post to your default network, and you're good. Better yet, just write on your blog, then have IFTTT share that post on all of your networks. And to save just a bit more time, you can have it change your profile pictures on all of your social networks when you change it on one of them.
Then, for good measure, you can have IFTTT backup your blog posts to Dropbox or Google Docs or Evernote. Or all 3 — the more, the merrier, right?
Quit Talking to Siri
Siri's great, really. But why should you have to ask it what the weather is, or what today's stock prices are?
Instead, use IFTTT to tell you when there's news that's relevant to you, when stock prices on your stocks change over a certain amount, when it's going to rain, and more. The latter two are simple: there's built-in weather and stock/currency triggers that you can directly. With News, it's a tad tougher since Twitter locked down on IFTTT's API usage, but you can still use it to monitor news RSS feeds for certain topics (or turn Twitter into an RSS feed and use that in IFTTT), or follow @breakingnews on App.net and use IFTTT to let you know when stuff happens in your country.
You can even have it remind you when you're supposed to be doing stuff — have it SMS you when you have an appointment, or turn on your coffee maker in the morning with a Belkin WeMo. Combine it with your email and an app like Mint or your bank's own alerts, and you could have it SMS you when you spend over a certain amount of money. Make your budget go even further with alerts of sales on Craigslist near you, without having to waste any of your time looking for them. And, of all things, you could have it keep track of all these little things in Evernote, giving you yet another backup on a part of your life that you would have never thought of backing up, but that just might be interesting going forward.
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IFTTT won't automate everything in your life, but it sure can simplify a ton of the tedious little tasks that take up time and keep you from being productive. And it can even help you know stuff you wouldn't have otherwise. It's hard to imagine living without it once you've got it integrated in your life.
You can check out the Most Popular recipes on IFTTT's own site, or see what Hacker News and Quora users are using it for. Or just think of what you need to automate — your inbox, the news, your backups — and try to put it to use on your own. You might be surprised how much this one little tool can keep you productive by taking care of more of those little frustrating things for you, automatically.
Originally published on July 15th, 2013 in Techinch Magazine Issue 5