

IFTTT launches on Android with deeper integration than on iOS - mattty
http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/internet-glue-service-ifttt-launches-on-android-with-deeper-integration-than-ios/

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bluetidepro
Congrats on their big launch! This is very exciting for their Android users!
I'm not going to lie, as an iOS user I'm quite jealous. Ha This gives Android
users quite a bit more tiggers available for them that iOS users can't do. The
iOS app can only do basic things like calendar, contacts, and photos. Things
such as "sending a text as yourself", changing settings on your phone, etc.
are awesome features they added for Android that I wish iOS also offered. But
I do understand the nature of iOS being more locked down than Android.

Sort of off topic, but I wonder if IFTTT will ever start charging for their
services. I'm a huge fan of what they do, and it surprises me that they have
stayed free for this long. Similar services (more directed towards tech) like
Zapier [1] have very fair pricing plans, but their free plan is so-so. I would
be more than willing to pay for the awesome work that IFTTT is doing with
their platform. Just wonder if they will ever introduce pricing plans into
their service or not.

[1] [https://zapier.com/](https://zapier.com/)

~~~
gallamine
I use IFTTT to send myself multiple text messages a day, to which I respond
and log the results in a Google Doc spreadsheet. Each month I blast past the
100 message limit. I've asked IFTTT to let me pay them for more messages but
they said no.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Use Twilio, and have a stub of code inject your responses into your Google
Docs spreadsheet. 1 penny per text message they receive for you, $1/month for
the number.

Here, just found this blog post via the googles:

[https://www.twilio.com/blog/2012/11/connecting-twilio-sms-
to...](https://www.twilio.com/blog/2012/11/connecting-twilio-sms-to-a-google-
spreadsheet.html)

[https://github.com/jpf/TwilioSheet](https://github.com/jpf/TwilioSheet)

~~~
gallamine
Thanks! This may be the impetus I've been waiting for to make the switch.

~~~
toomuchtodo
No problem. Working on getting you a promo code so your number and a bucket of
texts are free for testing.

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pulmo
It's available now. Am I missing something or is there no login button? I only
get an option to register.

Edit: Installed it on another device and the app only says "Hello world!".
Seems like the Play Store distributes different versions for smartphones and
tablets.

Edit 2: The login button is cut off on my phone because they failed to put the
login/register screen into a ScrollView.

Edit 3: Also the positioning of the loading indicator is weird:
[http://imgur.com/jp6wtIA](http://imgur.com/jp6wtIA)

~~~
kevinebaugh
We're on top of both issues, stay tuned to the store for an update!

~~~
dovel
Will there be calendar functionality beyond google calendar? I would love to
be able to use my caldav/fruux calendars with IFTTT. I saw a tweet from the
folks over at fruux who mentioned willingness to help out wit that.

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rtpg
Android stuff really starts to shine when you hit the "deep" system
modifications, and makes me glad I'm not iOS.

Things we get in android that iOS users :

\- Pushbullet

\- Cover

\- Fullfeatured chat heads in Facebook messanger(overlaid on any app)

\- This

------
joeblau
Congrats to IFTTT and Jordan Beck for shipping this product. I'm seeing more
and more apps on iOS which are ported to Android only to be met by an
incumbent app that is on par or superior to the iOS offering. I love IFTTT but
the iOS restrictions make it difficult to enable the types of recipes I really
want to create.

~~~
bluetidepro
I think that's more of the fault of iOS, not IFTTT though right? I mean iOS
only gives an app access to so much, where as Android apps can get all those
access from the get go. I'm not 100% sure how permissions work for iOS, but I
have a feeling it's more locked down that you would have to be a partner with
Apple to get the type of permissions they allow on Android devices by default.

~~~
joeblau
Yeah I agree with you. iOS is pretty locked down compared to Android and I'm
not sure if even a partnership would help. Unless your a company the size of
Google, Apple will probably just swallow you whole.

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josephschmoe
As an Android user, I have one question:

How does IFTTT compare to Tasker?

~~~
swanson
From poking around with IFTTT a bit today, Tasker is way more advanced in
terms of what you can do with your device (settings, launching other apps,
phone specific stuff) but the UI is very complicated and confusing. IFTTT's UI
is really nice and has more integration with web services and popular social
apps (Twitter, Instagram, etc), but the device integrations are pretty
limited.

I imagine as IFTTT continues building they will add more device integrations -
at which point I'd happily switch from Tasker.

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donniezazen
These new generation of applications with deeper integration on Android have
become my favorite feature of Android. Facebook's chat head, LastPass's Fill
into the Apps, etc. completely changes how you use your smart devices.

~~~
cageface
Try LinkBubble also, if you haven't already. I agree that we're finally
starting to see talented devs really take advantage of the extra freedom
Android gives them to extend the platform. From where I sit there's a lot more
innovation happening in apps on the Android side now and the quality gap has
closed in most cases.

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donatzsky
I can install it on my Nexus 4, but not my Nexus 7 (2013), despite it clearly
being tablet optimized. What's up with that?

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kordless
They might want to check the Google Play Store, because all the links show
nothing:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ifttt.iftt...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ifttt.ifttt)

~~~
kevinebaugh
We're on it, get an email as soon as it's live:
[http://ift.tt/updates](http://ift.tt/updates)

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JoshTriplett
This is a bit of a tangent, but does anyone know a reliable way to download
and install Android APKs from the Play store for a device that does not have
Google Play itself installed (and intentionally does not have a Google account
associated with it)?

~~~
parondea
Is this what you are looking for:

[http://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/](http://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/)

~~~
JoshTriplett
That's a web-based version of [https://lekensteyn.nl/apk-
downloader/](https://lekensteyn.nl/apk-downloader/) , and according to that
site it adds spyware. Considering that the site you linked has pop-up ads for
dubious downloads, that seems likely.

In any case, both of those still require having the Android device registered
with a Google account.

~~~
footpath
Thank you for the information. According to the linked XDA discussion:

"Evozi's fork is based on opensource 1.4.x, with tracking code and removes
validation for undownloadable APKs as a fix for new play store. Besides this,
it also removes the copyright header of background.js, adds more tracking and
some textual changes (adding links to his own apps and social accounts)."

[http://forum.xda-
developers.com/showpost.php?p=44032616&post...](http://forum.xda-
developers.com/showpost.php?p=44032616&postcount=387)

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marcelftw
I just installed it on my iPhone 5s, iOS 7.0.4. Already had an account, I knew
what was all the fuss about and I went my way and create a new receipe using
my device delicious new "this" or "then" !

So it goes : "if any new photo taken with front camera then add file from URL
to marcelftw's Dropbox".

I took several photos, but the receipe has never been triggered :( I'm a bit
confused. So I went and edit the dropbox actions. So it saves photos in
"selfies" with file name has "selfie-{{TakenDate}}". And the "Check Now" says
everything is alright.

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aliou
To be honest, it's not that hard to have deeper integration than on iOS.

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petval
Hm, I installed it on my Android and now my recipes in the web interface are
gone. I have logged in from different browser to their web and got "something
is not working" error.

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JoshTriplett
Any plans for download integration? I'd love to see ifttt rules like "when I
add a YouTube video to Watch Later, download it to my device next time I'm on
Wifi".

~~~
n3t
Workaround: IFTTT provides an option to download a file to, for example,
Dropbox (note: be aware of file size limit). One can use his/her server with
script which streams video (or anything else) based on the source URL to make
video/audio/whatever downloadable. Then Android device just syncs and voilà!

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werid
Looks like a rough launch. When I should have gotten a message that my
registration was ok I got a timeout.

Not sure if the app was supposed to ask me more questions after an OK
registration, when I tried to re-register and got "this username is taken", I
tried to login and that worked. Found myself subscribed to a bunch of semi-
random channels.

While exploring tasks, I started getting more timeouts.

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mrfusion
Will IFTTT have traffic triggers in the future? I've been wanting a way to get
traffic alerts before leaving work for years. I've found a few places that
offer it, but nothing has been reliable.

In a perfect world I'd tie traffic conditions to when my alarm clock wakes me
up!

~~~
jaredmcateer
I've worked around this by setting a reoccurring meeting to go home with my
address in Google Calendar, my phone tells me beforehand when I need to leave
in order to get home on time. I don't know if it includes traffic in its
estimates but I've never been late (give or take a couple minutes).

------
omh
This looks promising. I've got several IFTTT recipes in mind that I'd like to
try out when they support my phone.

Unfortunately my Facebook related recipes never go quite so well, but I think
that's Facebook's fault really.

------
archemike_
I absolutely love the slideshow introduction leading to a login. It's like a
feature funnel I suppose versus a sales funnel, pre-selling me to take the
time to create credentials. Kudos +1

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will_work4tears
Can't even login to the main site now, must be getting hammered.

Any IFTTT recipes for sending a text when you're within a certain radius of a
target? That'd be nice.

~~~
chinpokomon
You can make one easily enough. There is a location trigger and you can scale
the distance. It may not be as precise as you'd like and the smallest zone was
still pretty large.

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FroshKiller
Wow, and just this week, I installed Pushbullet to handle getting
notifications from IFTTT to my Android phone. Oh well, I will continue to use
Pushbullet, and this is still good news.

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bichiliad
Hmm, it's crashing on a fresh install of Cyanogenmod. I can't blame them too
much for that, though.

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AbhishekBiswal
Item isn't available on Play Store. I guess they removed it.

~~~
kevinebaugh
Not removed, just not there yet. Get an email as soon as it's live:
[http://ift.tt/updates](http://ift.tt/updates)

~~~
twism
Worked for me and installed.

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lnanek2
Getting not found on the link as well. Not that it would be worth anything
anyway. Android has long had apps for this such as Locale (around since the
very early Android Developer Challenges) and Tasker. They must know someone at
TechCrunch to get such a favorable write up for a clone.

~~~
untog
I tried Tasker. It's a usability nightmare. A perfect example of the bad
Android UI that people stereotype (despite many Android apps having fantastic
UI these days).

It also costs money. IFTTT appears to be free, and has a large community built
around it. Just because it has some similar functionality to Tasker (and much
else besides) doesn't make it a "clone".

