If You Use IFTTT Then Consider Sharing Recipes

July 24, 2014 7:04 AM

As of yesterday there is an Also On option for IFTTT. If you use the service, please consider adding IFTTT to your profile page. If you are also creating MetaFilter-related "recipes" then please consider sharing them on the wiki. Thanks for adding this useful service to the list, pb!
posted by terrapin to MetaFilter-Related at 7:04 AM (62 comments total)

If you're wondering what IFTTT is then Learn More.

It's pronounced like 'gift' but without the 'g'.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:14 AM on July 24, 2014

Done! Right now I only have one recipe that takes the pictures I put on Instagram and put them also on facebook. I am hoping that IFTTT gets support for MLKSHK at some point.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 7:14 AM on July 24, 2014

I am hoping it gets support for Untappd!
posted by terrapin at 7:16 AM on July 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Done! Thanks, pb!
posted by zarq at 7:27 AM on July 24, 2014

I read the About page, and I still don't understand what this is and what it's for.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:44 AM on July 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I have recipe set up to save all of my favorites as private bookmarks to pinboard, using the rss feed of my favorites. It didn't share it because everyone's rss url will be different.
posted by soelo at 7:45 AM on July 24, 2014

what this is and what it's for

When I do something in one webservice, I can choose to have something happen in another. There are also triggers for your phone or items in your house that are web-enabled.

Whenever I save something in Feedly or love something in Tumblr or star something in Google reader (when it was still working), it is saved as a bookmark on pinboard.

Whenever I post pictures on Facebook, they are posted as drafts on my tumblr blog and I can choose to post them or not.

If you mean, "Why would anyone want to do that," that is a different discussion all together.
posted by soelo at 7:52 AM on July 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

Thanks, soelo. I recognize some of the words you used, so I think I have a grasp on what's going on here. I guess I'm just too old to be in the target audience.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:55 AM on July 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is convenient. I have been meaning to ask an IFTTT question on AskMe for a while now.

Is it possible through IFTTT recipes to have photos taken on an iPhone uploaded to a Mac's iPhoto library automatically? It's fine if it has to do it through some sort of DropBox/Google Drive type situation. Ideally it would:
1. Only upload on WiFi
2. Only upload photos taken with the camera, not saved images or screenshots.

Thanks!
posted by Rock Steady at 8:00 AM on July 24, 2014

I'm older than you =)
posted by soelo at 8:00 AM on July 24, 2014 [6 favorites]

soelo, your recipes can be used as templates for others. When you share the recipe, and another person uses the recipe they can change the feed. I posted some of my recipes on the wiki, and they are specific to Vermont, but they can easily be adapted. Similar to cooking, sometimes having the recipe is enough to give another cook an idea.
posted by terrapin at 8:03 AM on July 24, 2014

Faint of Butt, I am 14 years older than you, so not sure age is an excuse!
posted by terrapin at 8:04 AM on July 24, 2014

Rock Steady - There can be issues with IFTTT using too much data with iPhone photos. There is a setting in the web app that you can use to turn off cellular data.
posted by soelo at 8:05 AM on July 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Long story short: it gives users of multiple web(enabled) services the ability to cross-link these things. If you don't use a bunch of different web services, don't worry, it's not for you.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:06 AM on July 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I am an old guy 50+ that uses IFTTT. I use it to send messages to me regarding weather in a location not home, reminders on time and a few GMail things. It is an interesting product. You do not need use if for cross platform purposes only.
posted by 724A at 8:07 AM on July 24, 2014

Rock Steady, it may be easier to do that with another service. For example, take a photo with your iPhone using Instagram and tag it. Set up an IFTTT that saves photos you tagged to your Photostream.

Browse or search the recipes for ideas. I have seen things similar, but nothing that saves directly to a local Mac without using Photostream.
posted by terrapin at 8:09 AM on July 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I just shared a couple of recipes I use. I use Pinboard for bookmarks. Anytime I favorite a post here, IFTTT adds it as a bookmark at Pinboard for me. (I post to Pinboard via email so I can customize the bookmark title—the standard Pinboard widget doesn't let you do that for some reason.) Then I also have a simple recipe that automatically shares Pinboard bookmarks at Facebook . And that's how my MetaFilter favorites Rube Goldberg their way to Facebook.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:12 AM on July 24, 2014 [5 favorites]

pb: And that's how my MetaFilter favorites Rube Goldberg their way to Facebook.

Needs more rubber ducks and ball bearings, and maybe an old shoe.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:17 AM on July 24, 2014 [5 favorites]

Thank you for reminding me to change my IFTTT garbage day warning, terrapin. (I haven't figured out what to use if for other than garbage day reminders and weather updates.)
posted by jeather at 8:17 AM on July 24, 2014

This is a very cool idea, and but I can't think of anything I would want to do with it.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:18 AM on July 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

This is a very cool idea, and but I can't think of anything I would want to do with it.

This. I'm sure I'll come up with something dumb to try, though.
posted by selfnoise at 8:24 AM on July 24, 2014

RockSteady, I asked a question you might be interested in recently.
posted by ellieBOA at 8:25 AM on July 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

The only thing I've used it for is to harass our music director on Twitter when he needs to write a tuba part for an upcoming mass. At 5pm every day it tweets at him, "Hey, Luke, I need a tuba part for Spirit of God". I have never gotten tuba parts written so promptly (nor seen the music director simply tweet, "God dammit call off the hounds" so often).
posted by charred husk at 8:56 AM on July 24, 2014 [6 favorites]

I have an account, but the sad thing is that I can think of a million ways I could have used this six or seven years ago but I can't find a single way to use it now. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's recipes because this is so right up my alley.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:13 AM on July 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I use IFTTT for everything, or rather I use it with my typical pattern of being obssessed with something for six months and then ignoring it for six more. The single greatest development lately has been the addition of pocket functionality to Kobo reader. Now, using IFTTT, I can send articles straight (from pinboard > pocket > kobo) to my device with a single tag. Sure beats the baroque process of generating epubs on instapaper. Sharing these kind of rube golberg recipes though is of limited use.

I don't think I have a single MeFi recipe active anymore, because a) it clashes with the variety of ways one might want to favourite a post, and b) with a modal browser my process of saving a bookmark directly to pinboard is something like

:pb mefi useful_tag1 useful_tag2

and done.

Is there an RSS feed for an individual users favourite comments hiding somewhere? I vaguely recall there being some reason for not having one.
posted by Lorin at 9:28 AM on July 24, 2014

I have to admit I have been resistant to signing up with IFTTT because it appears you have to give them basically ALL your passwords for it to connect the various "this's" and "that's."

Is this right? Totally wrong? Only partly right? Is there any decently useful subset of recipes that do not require me to give IFTTT my passwords from other sites / services? I can imagine notifications about weather or traffic at certain locations, or watching for discounts at various store sites or whatever... is that kind of thing handled well?

Sorry if I'm missing an obvious description of such things, but it has never been clear to me.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 9:54 AM on July 24, 2014

Previously, re: passwords and IFTTT.
posted by terrapin at 10:08 AM on July 24, 2014

Joey Buttafoucault:

Is this right?

Yes, this is right. You have to trust IFTTT. Just looking at all the privileges the IFTTT app wanted for Android made me wince. And you'll have to give it access to something if you want any sort of notification - how else will it tell you that it is raining?
posted by charred husk at 10:11 AM on July 24, 2014

Is there an RSS feed for an individual users favourite comments hiding somewhere?

No, we don't provide a feed for favorite comments. The reasoning there is that when people write a post they're expecting that post to stand on its own. When people post comments they're expecting those comments to be part of a conversation. Having a comment feed would make it extremely easy to take comments out of context and repurpose them offsite. IIRC we break that rule in a couple of places, but keeping comments in context is the guideline we use.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:13 AM on July 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

charred husk: how else will it tell you that it is raining?

My phone also serves as a 21st century weather rock. Plug in your headphones, or hang it from a cord of some sort, and there you go!

phone white and cold: snow
phone wet: rain
phone swings: windy
phone spins: tornado (or your cord is twisted)
phone shakes: earthquake
can't see phone: foggy or dark
posted by filthy light thief at 10:16 AM on July 24, 2014 [16 favorites]

Thanks, pb. Makes good sense.
posted by Lorin at 10:26 AM on July 24, 2014

Thanks a lot for the favorites -> Pinboard recipe, pb. I've been idly thinking I should figure out how to set that up for awhile.
posted by roll truck roll at 10:43 AM on July 24, 2014

And you'll have to give it access to something if you want any sort of notification - how else will it tell you that it is raining?

Well, giving it "access to something" is well short of actually entering any passwords - for instance if I entered my phone number or email address only, it could use some sort of service to text or email me without requiring passwords or doing anything with OAuth. Frankly that's how I would expect notifications to work if I was willing to live without channels such as Facebook and Dropbox and such. Anyway, thanks; I'll poke around the channel list and see what looks good, I guess.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 10:48 AM on July 24, 2014

Lorin: "with a modal browser"

Vimperator?
posted by zamboni at 11:05 AM on July 24, 2014

Whenever I have given IFTTT permission to an app, like Flickr or Tumblr, the app itself has told me that IFTTT will not be given my password. It is given permission to do things on my behalf, but the service knows it is not me. If IFTTT went rogue, I'd turn off its permission from the service itself (flickr or tumblr). I don't use all the channels, so I don't know if all apps work this way.
posted by soelo at 11:09 AM on July 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

we don't provide a feed for favorite comments

You can export your favorites and then import them into pinboard. Duplicates are not imported unless they have additional tags. You can also mark them all private on the import.
posted by soelo at 11:17 AM on July 24, 2014

This is a very cool idea, and but I can't think of anything I would want to do with it.

Besides the instagram/facebook thing, the other two things I use it for a lot are

1. "text me if it's going to snow today" which was great except that it was a little overly liberal with when it might snow and I got more texts than snow

2. "I want to buy an X on Craigslist, send me an email when there is an X for sale" good for when you want to buy something specific (giant beanbag, exercise bicycle) or something cheap and quick (Verizon cell phone, kayak paddle) and you don't want to keep checking CL. You can take the RSS feed of a search and tell IFTTT to email you new additions to it.

What I would love is a thing that would send all my MLKSHK posts to a special tumblr so that I could have that content in both places. If you look at their recipes page you can see other things that people have used it for.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 11:49 AM on July 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

What I would love is a thing that would send all my MLKSHK posts to a special tumblr...

I think you can do that now. Find your MLKSHK feed URL by tacking '/rss' on to the end of your shake URL. Then plug that into the Feed channel at IFTTT. I do this to send my MLKSHK posts to Pinboard and it works well.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:59 AM on July 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Thanks! I have made this and people can copy the version I have here (change URL to yours) or make their own.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 12:26 PM on July 24, 2014

IFTTT is pretty amazing. I've saved myself a lot of coding/server load headaches for cross-site stuff in my little network of sites by using it. The downside, which is why I tend these days to avoid web service stuff as much as possible because the Big Boys keep buying them and breaking them or shutting them down, is that if it goes away, you're stuck until you can replicate the functionality it provides yourself.

But if it's just for fun/minor stuff that you don't depend on heavily, it's supercool.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:43 PM on July 24, 2014

Faint of Butt: I have IFTTT text me on the last day of every month to remind me to buy a new subway pass. This works with a dumb phone. I could do something similar with email if I chose to. You don't have to use it for interconnecting web services (although that is what it does best).
posted by maryr at 7:03 PM on July 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah - I'm sort of curious what will happen with ifttt - do they have a plan to make money or do they expect someone to buy them? And, of course, how much info are they storing about what I'm doing and how often, and how valuable is that data to some big company?

I set up a couple of simple recipes a while ago (saving pocket bookmarks to pinboard, etc), but haven't looked to see what their new channels are.
posted by rmd1023 at 10:30 AM on July 25, 2014

Vimperator?

zamboni, yeah! Sorry, totally missed the question. There is a great little Vimperator plugin for pinboard floating around, which is kinda lacking documentation but awesome nonetheless.
posted by Lorin at 6:14 PM on July 25, 2014

jessamyn: "What I would love is a thing that would send all my MLKSHK posts to a special tumblr so that I could have that content in both places."

I use IFTTT to send the posts on my paleoart shake to Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. Nobody really looks at any of that, but it's still pretty neat.
posted by brundlefly at 6:26 PM on July 25, 2014

I have already shared the one IFTTT recipe I use: Whenever my local weather forecast contains the word "thunder" text me a reminder to put a Thundershirt on my dog and give him a Xanax.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 12:23 PM on July 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

I love these comments and I'm starting to get a better feel for what it can do. I just really wish that their site didn't have that really huge whatchamacallit layout where everything is really huge. I'd like to be able to see more than four recipes at once.
posted by Room 641-A at 3:37 PM on July 26, 2014

I just started using this a couple of days ago. Been doing a lot of setting up an organizing in Evernote. I finally figured out how to best use it for me and it's wicked!

I'm now collecting all of my emails into gmail and using IFTTT to send stuff directly to different folders and specifc tags in Evernote using specific labels in gmail as a trigger.

So for instance all of my receipts get an 'Online Receipt' label in gmail which triggers IFTTT to send them directly to my receipt folder. Any email that get's starred gets sent to my main inbox folder for sorting. I expect that I'll make other labels that are connected to specific folders as time goes on. Boy is this ever a time saver. I love this program!!!!!
posted by Jalliah at 5:24 PM on July 26, 2014

I had made this for a previous thread here on the grey: post metafilter favorites to twitter
posted by deezil at 9:35 PM on July 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

"I want to buy an X on Craigslist, send me an email when there is an X for sale"

Hells to the yes to this! I have a couple such Craigslist IFTTT recipes set up, which is how I scored a lovely little banjoele for peanuts just yesterday. & Thanks for the MetaFilter favorite -> Pinboard recipe idea pb, I'm off to set that one up right now.
posted by usonian at 5:57 PM on July 28, 2014

Do people still have SMS plans ITYOL 2014? Really?
posted by entropicamericana at 11:56 AM on July 30, 2014

Yes. I'm limited to 250 texts per month.

But I also have unlimited data on Verizon until I buy a new phone and re-up my contract. So, who cares?
posted by zarq at 12:02 PM on July 30, 2014

Hey everyone! An old man is talking!

I just don't get IFTTT, that's all. If I want the weather, I'll ask Siri. If I want the correct weather, I'll launch the Weather Channel app. I have never wanted to be emailed a social media status. The only thing I can see somewhat of a use for is reposting social media content from one network to another, and who doesn't love pissing people off with duplicate content?

Once I start buying home automation stuff, I can see it being genuinely useful, I'll admit.

Now let me tell you about the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days....
posted by entropicamericana at 12:57 PM on July 30, 2014

entropicamericana, I love that you're claiming to be an out of touch old man and talking about Siri, mobile apps, social networks, and home automation at the same time.
posted by brundlefly at 1:00 PM on July 30, 2014 [3 favorites]

What is the point of saying you don't find something useful when many other people do and have given examples?
posted by soelo at 2:02 PM on July 30, 2014

brundlefly: Well, isn't "old and out-of-touch" the standard go-to response when somebody questions the utility of a new service?

soelo: Good for them. I'm just saying I don't get it and gave my reasons why. I'm not condemning people who find it useful.
posted by entropicamericana at 2:28 PM on July 30, 2014

I'm just saying I don't get it and gave my reasons why.

Which is fine as far as that goes, but showing up in a thread where people are discussing thing just to announce that you don't care about it complete with "get off my lawn" tone is of minimal utility to anyone but you, assuming it's even useful to you as some sort of catharsis or something.

If you have a question about why other people might like it, or how you could use it, that's great. Ask it. The site can only handle so many "Well I'm not impressed" commenters in a thread where people are discussing a thing that they like. It doesn't scale and it comes across as probably more aggressive and negative than maybe you intended it.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 3:36 PM on July 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

(Aren't you supposed to be retired?)
posted by entropicamericana at 3:46 PM on July 30, 2014

(Aren't you supposed to be retired?)

Did you intend that to sound as passive-aggressive as it does? jessamyn is retired, but that doesn't mean she can't contribute in MeTa just like any other member. I, for one, am glad to have the benefit of her years of experience behind the mod curtain.

Anyway, on the IFTTT front, I just set up a recipe I can already tell will be useful: when I tag something "possfpp" in Pocket, create a note from it in my Evernote "MeFi FPP planning" folder.
posted by Lexica at 4:25 PM on July 30, 2014 [4 favorites]

Now let me tell you about the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville

I have IFTTT send me a text to wear an onion on my belt (when it is in fashion).
posted by ikahime at 9:55 PM on July 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm so glad that this thread introduced me to IFTTT

The only thing I can see somewhat of a use for is reposting social media content from one network to another, and who doesn't love pissing people off with duplicate content?

Here are some of the things I've set it up to do:

Since I can type faster on my computer, which I sit at all day at work, I had been using the email to text gateway to text my fiancee (who doesn't sit at a computer), but annoyingly for her these text messages came from different TMobile equipment each time, so instead, I've set up a recipe where I email IFTTT with a specific hashtag in the subject line and my phone then texts her the body of the message.

I have a weekly meeting that ends at a specific time. After that I like to catch the bus. So I've set up IFTT to tell my phone to text the MTA Bus Times service automatically each week at 11 AM, right as the meeting ends so that I will get a text message back telling me when the next bus is arriving at the bus stop outside the building.

Create a log of all my text messages in a google spreadsheet (so I can delete them off my phone)

Create a log of all my phone calls in a google spreadsheet (so I can delete them off my phone)

Sync my Facebook and Twitter profile pictures (so I don't have to bother changing each individually.)
posted by Jahaza at 10:16 AM on July 31, 2014 [3 favorites]

Oh! I forgot! Whenever I share something on Newsblur it posts the link to my Twitter account.
posted by brundlefly at 12:15 PM on July 31, 2014

I've set up IFTT to tell my phone to text the MTA Bus Times service automatically each week at 11 AM, right as the meeting ends so that I will get a text message back telling me when the next bus is arriving at the bus stop outside the building.

This is brilliant. I am stealing the idea immediately. Thank you!
posted by Lexica at 12:21 PM on July 31, 2014