IFTTT makes new tools to make your IoT Applets even better

IFTTT makes new tools to make your IoT Applets even better

Wish your Alexa could do something new? There's likely an IFTTT Applet for that.

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Ever wanted to build your own app? IFTTT—the platform that lets consumer stitch together services and products on their own—is giving individual makers the ability to push their creative, coded instructions out to the wider IFTTT community starting today.

IFTTT, which launched in 2010, launched on the idea of letting people invent their own way of making work together. The company was a boon to the digital maker community which wanted to make things work the way they wanted—not just how a company envisions. Want to get notified if your fridge door was left open? There's an Applet for that. Have your smart water sprinkler delay until the rain stops? That too. Users just turn these actions on, and the devices get connected—and programmed.


IFTTT, which initially stood for If This Then That, once called these user-made options recipes, but now calls them Applets. Users could always make them for their own use. But as of today, they'll be able to push their creations out further, developing Applets that can publicly be found by others through a public profile page, stitch together a wider groupings of actions—not just two—and also build Applets for devices they don't actually own.

IFTTT now gives makers their own public profile where their Applets can be found.Photo courtesy of IFTTT

IFTTT's Anne Mercogliano, vice president of marketing and developer experience, says 30 to 40 percent of those signed up with IFTTT already create their own Applets. But this move is aimed at making it even easier for consumers to build their own services—and for companies to find them as well.

On the blackboard for IFTTT includes stitching the service into other kinds of products including those that support virtual reality and augmented reality. Mercogliano says if a company has an API, IFTTT can work with them. When asked if they were also speaking about integrating IFTTT into self-driving cars technology, like Uber, Mercogliano just smiled.

"Ultimately the analogy is we want to be PayPal for access," says Mercogliano. "We are not building hardware, and not a social network, but an ecosystem."


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