If you haven’t heard about IFTTT, it’s a cross-platform app that helps you automate services, apps, tasks, and devices. Its name is an acronym for If This Then That, which clearly describes its functioning. You set a service action as a condition and another action from another service as an action to perform. Here are a few ways I use IFTTT to make my life easier.

3 Home automation

Turning the lights and thermostat on before getting home

Probably the best usage for IFTTT is automatically triggering actions on your smart devices at home. I admit that I don’t have many of those, but this automation application made me think about getting more. However, I managed to create a basic task to turn on the lights when I came home.

To do that, go into the IFTTT app on a browser or phone and click or touch the Create button to start making an automation. Then, pick the Location service to use as an If condition. Now, you can choose whether to trigger the action when you enter an area, when you exit it, or both. I selected the first option because I want to turn on the lights when I am close to home. After you select your location, click on Create Trigger.

Now, you must choose the Then That option to set what happens when entering that area. I looked for lights on the services list and found the Philips Hue I have. However, there are dozens of smart home applications to control smart lights. There are a lot more to trigger garage doors, activate thermostats, open the front door, etc.

After I selected my lights, there are more options to choose from, such as creating an ambiance lighting, blinking, dimming, or simply turning them on. The last step is to log into the smart device application and grant permission to IFTTT to use it. After that, the applet is set up and whenever I get close to home, the lights will automatically turn on.

As I mentioned above, you can use it with more apps to trigger more actions, and you can also use it on your phone. Here’s a scenario I strive to achieve: when I get home, play jazz music with Alexa, brew a cup of coffee, and set the thermostat to 61.7 F. Is that too much to ask?

2 Keeping tabs with all the expenses on Google Sheets

You will have a much clearer view of your budget

I have tried many times to keep tabs on my spending, especially the small ones that you don’t acknowledge or note down immediately. I rely on notes, but then, when I need to get them down on a cold spreadsheet, I never find the time to do it. With IFTTT, it’s actually crazy simple to do that. I set up an applet to transfer anything I write on a note to a Google Sheets file.

First, I created an applet and used a Note widget as a conditional trigger. You can choose Evernote or Zoho, but the note widget applies to any note you take on your Android or iPhone device. That is the trigger you can choose next as a trigger. Next, I chose Google Sheets as a service and added a new row to a spreadsheet as a consequence.

To conclude, whenever I take a note on my phone, what I write up will appear as a new row on my Google Sheet spreadsheet. When it reaches 2000 rows, the applet will automatically create a new one.

This doesn’t only work for a list of expenses, but for any note you’re writing. It will all be there whether you’re recording a great idea or the last tab at the restaurant. And you can go even further with this. For instance, you can add a trigger to post this note on a Discord channel or add an event on Google Calendar. The possibilities are limited to a list of 20 items.

1 Using productivity automation

Keeping records of your work made easy

You can use IFTTT to do a lot of automation work on your mobile device and PC. One that is particularly useful to me is to take down the new Asana tasks in a Google Sheets spreadsheet. IFTTT works with many other project management services, so you can use this as an example to create your own automation.

As you’ve seen above, we first need to create a new applet, set Asana as the service, and a New task in a project as a trigger. Of course, you will have to provide your account, the name of your project, or its URL.

Then, you have to decide what to do with that data. I set Google Sheets as a service and added a new row to a spreadsheet as the outcome. Of course, you can set up a notification on your phone or even send yourself an SMS when you get a new task.

This is just one automation process that helped me with my productivity. However, there are many other possibilities. You could log any new Slack message from a channel on Google Sheets, or you might save your Evernote notes tagged with a specific keyword into a folder on Google Drive, etc. You just need to try IFTTT and explore the combinations that work for you.

Should you use IFTTT?

Whether you should use IFTTT or not depends on your automation needs. I have given you a few examples of how I use it to make my life a bit easier, but these are only a measly percent of what you can do with the app. Luckily, you can create two applets and use them for free. However, if you decide you need more, you can go for IFTTT Pro account for $2.49 which allows you to create up to 20 applets.