Skip to main content

Meet LIFTTT, the app that lets you do almost anything, from anywhere

LIFTTT Screenshots
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Heard of IFTTT? Weirdly, it’s one of those acronyms that once you learn what it stands for, you think, “Ah, I won’t forget that,” and then it promptly drops out of your head. IFTTT means “IF This, Then That,” and it’s a service which lets you create custom formulas known as recipes to perform basic tasks without your assistance. For example, you can set up IFTTT to automatically upload your new mobile photos to Google Drive, or Flickr. It connects apps together to make your life easier.

It’s a powerful tool, and now a new app has now been launched which increases its versatility with a location-based twist. It’s called LIFTTT, and comes from Visual Candy Apps, the creative team behind the automatic Foursquare check-in app Uber Checkin. We had a chat with creator Stephen Lum, who along with his wife Anya Mallon, see LIFTTT as the logical follow-up to Uber Checkin.

So how does it work? Let’s use logging an Evernote note as an example. In IFTTT you can add a note to a log or diary at a particular time of day, but LIFTTT enhances this by adding the option of specifying a location. This turns the basic recipe into an accurate timesheet for work, which you never have to remember to fill in each day, or a measure for how long you really spend at the gym.

What else? If you’ve embraced hardware such as the Belkin WeMo, Philips Hue lights, or the Nest thermostat, these are already well catered for by IFTTT. Add LIFTTT, and you’re able to activate all of them based on your location. How about turning up the heating at home when you arrive at the train station? Or activating the porch lights when you get to the top of your road? It’s all possible.

LIFTTT Screenshots UI
Image used with permission by copyright holder

However, while we love IFTTT, it’s still a very geeky thing and can be baffling to newcomers. We asked Stephen how he intended to make LIFTTT accessible to everyone, rather than only IFTTT’s core audience. “There’s lots of easy to understand documentation, and plenty of guidance the first time you start the app,” he said, “and we’re known for our great customer service.” Hopefully this will allow more people to try this interesting app.

Having played with a pre-release version, we can say that clear instructions can only take you so far, as the whole concept of LIFTTT, IFTTT, and its recipes will still be hard for some to penetrate. The learning curve is steep then, but as LIFTTT’s rewards are unique, it’s worth persevering as once it’s up and running the app seems to work well. LIFTTT looks good, and fits in with the new look of iOS 7, although the main screen seems to exist only to push you into downloading other apps.

Anyone who wants to try LIFTTT will need to have an IFTTT account, which can be made online or through the app, and there are thousands of pre-made recipes from which to choose. You can build your own, or try out LIFTTT’s own location-enhanced examples. From the in-app documentation, it seems a Gmail account is also essential to setting up LIFTTT, which may be awkward. Good news for Android users though: LIFTTT will be available for Google’s OS and iOS, unlike IFTTT’s own app.

The app’s free to download from Google Play and the App Store today, and you’re able to add a single location recipe in this basic version. If you want more, then unlimited location-based recipes must be unlocked with a $3 in-app purchase.

Editors' Recommendations

Andy Boxall
Senior Mobile Writer
Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…
What is the Temu app? Here’s everything you need to know
Temu logo on an iPhone.

Following an increased marketing push starting in 2023, the Temu app has started to pick up some solid momentum that's driven many shoppers to want to check it out. As new marketplaces start to make their way into the mainstream, however, there's usually a healthy amount of skepticism toward them.

Although it's always a good impulse to be cautious about putting sensitive information into any app, here's everything you need to know about Temu — and if you truly need to be careful.
What is Temu?

Read more
TikTok just launched a new way for you to make money on the app
Person's hand holding a smartphone with TikTok's logo on screen, all in front of a blurred background.

There are already a handful of ways for content creators to make money using TikTok, but now the app is adding a brand new way for creators to monetize their content with the newly introduced TikTok Series.

Announced today in a TikTok blog post, Series are the same types of videos you'd normally find on the app, but they are hidden behind a paywall that individual creators can set. This means that delivering premium content on TikTok is easier than ever before for both creators and their audiences.

Read more
I let a ChatGPT app take over my phone’s keyboard, and it was wild
The ParagraphAI keyboard generating an automated reply to a Telegram message.

We're still in the early days of 2023, but if there's any major tech story from the year that'll be the most memorable, it'll be the incredible rise of ChatGPT. After the original ChatGPT app rose to fame in late 2022, it's become increasingly popular this year — most recently, with Microsoft integrating ChatGPT into Bing.

But it's not just Microsoft that's using ChatGPT. A company called ParagraphAI used ChatGPT to create an "AI writing app" that uses artificial intelligence to reply to your texts, emails, Twitter DMs, and more. Gone are the days of having to manually type out messages yourself – just make the AI do it! But is it any good? I've been testing the ParagraphAI app on my iPhone, and it's been a wild experience ... for a few different reasons.
How the ParagraphAI app works

Read more