The Best IFTTT Recipes For Totally Normal People

IFTTT may look less like an acronym and more like what happens when your cat walks across the keyboard. But it’s a very simple idea that can make your life easier in countless ways. IF This, Then That, or IFTTT (rhymes with “gift” is an automation service for tasks between devices connected to the Internet. The programs that connect tasks are called “recipes.” Once you get an IFTTT account, you have access to hundreds of “channels,” each containing countless recipes. Here are some of the best IFTTT recipes to get you started.

Best IFTTT Recipes

Help me find my lost phone!Make sure you never lose your phone again by using this recipe. IF you send yourself an e-mail with the hashtag #lostphone, THEN your phone will ring. Beginning to see how this works?

SMS reminder to pay monthly billNever get charged a late fee again! This simple program is easily one of the best IFTTT recipes out there. It will send you a customizable text message every month on a date and time you select, so that you can remind yourself that it’s time to pay your rent, phone bill, credit card bill, or anything else you hate and need to be reminded to do.

Track expenses and billsHate entering expenses into spreadsheets? This recipe will do it for you! It tracks receipts and bills sent to your Gmail and logs them to a spreadsheet automatically.

Automatically turn your lights offThis recipe will automatically turn off your lights when you leave the house.

Remember where you parked your carIf you use this recipe, you can get a text message at any time with your car’s current location. We’re only sorry this was developed too late for Jesse and Chester.

IFTTT recipes can also make your life on social media a lot easier by automating cross-posting. You can automatically post content from Pinterest to Tumblr, or Facebook to your WordPress blog, or from Facebook to Twitter with no effort at all. You can even totally erase the boundaries between public and private, and post your text messages to Facebook with the simple use of a hashtag or even put your voicemail (both a transcript and an MP3 file) on Facebook.

If you think your tweets are Kanye-level genius, one of the best IFTTT recipes can save them automatically to a spreadsheet. Speaking of spreadsheets, you can save other things there as well, from your favorite YouTube videos to your contacts to how much you’re sleeping.

On the health and fitness side of things, you can (if you really want to) see how much you weigh day-by-day or find out when you need to worry about allergies or get notifications if you don’t make your daily allotment of steps.

Now that you’ve got an idea of some of the things IFTTT recipes can do, make sure to explore the IFTTT website and find your own favorite recipes. Whether it’s to help your online profile, your productivity, your health, or even your chances of going to the moon, you can find recipes to accomplish your goals.