IFTTT is an acronym for If This Then That, and is one of the most popular services in consumer Smart Home and IoT. When it started out, the services IFTTT connected had nothing to do with either of those things, but it didn’t take long for manufacturers and developers to add support for this popular cloud-based service which links together other cloud-based services in a chain of Triggers and Actions.

In it’s simplest form, IFTTT asks one simple question and gives one simple answer.

If THIS happens, then THAT should be the result. An example might be two IoT devices, the first device in the string is the trigger and the second is the action or in other words, if THIS smart home sensor detects motion, then THAT smart bulb should turn on. This is only an example to illustrate a possibility, and typically you wouldn’t connect a sensor and smart bulb in this manor because the delay and reliability of such a connection is not practical today.


Many consumer Smart Home manufacturers now support IFTTT, and even use it as a selling point to make their devices more attractive to buyers. Rather than having to work inside the parameters of the various Application Program Interfaces or APIs from different manufacturers, each company can create an IFTTT service that can be connected to another IFTTT service to automate an action. The capability of each trigger and action is based on what the manufacturers decide is possible or are willing to make available.

IFTTT connects disparate devices that might not otherwise work together, but its limitations are reached very quickly. It’s not possible to have additional AND statements or ONLY IF conditions to create complex logic flows. To answers this need, a cloud service named Stringify was created. See our post here for a discussion on what Stringify is and how to create a basic flow. To our great delight, Stringify and IFTTT acted on our advice to form a partnership with support for nearly all the major smart home hubs and devices. Together, Stringify and IFTTT have formed a powerful alliance to connect otherwise disparate devices in your smart home. Like IFTTT, Stringify operates from the cloud, so there is no need to have an app running all the time.

Building an IFTTT Applet is easy

Before we start, you’ll need to create an IFTTT account. Although it’s possible to use the app, we recommend you use the web interface from a laptop or desktop the first time as it’s easier to explore the available services and get an understanding of how to configure Triggers and Actions.

Put security first

IFTTT and the associated services in the cloud will be able to control devices around your home and send notifications to your smart devices, so we recommend you review our post, How-to: Put Security First in Smart Home

Your First Applet

Once you are signed into your account, select “Search” in the upper-left of the IFTTT home page. This will allow you to browse by device type or you can type the manufacture of your smart device in the search box to see if it’s supported by IFTTT.

In our example, you will create an IFTTT Applet that sends a notification to your partner any time you arrive at, or leave work. For this to happen, you will need to also download IFTTT for your iOS or Android device.

Linking services

Continue to build the IFTTT Applet using a web browser on your laptop or desktop. Select “My Applets” in the upper-left, then click the “New Applet” button on the right of the page.

Click the word THIS and type “location” in the search box that follows, and then click on the blue “Location” box. Click “Connect”. Initially, this will connect your location of your laptop or desktop, but once you build the Applet and sign-in from you iOS or Android device, it will use that device location as the trigger, without the need to have the app running.
Now click, the blue box that says “You enter or exit an area” and then specify the address for the location to monitor. Use + to narrow the monitored and - to select a wider area. Lastly, click the “Create Trigger” button.

Next, click on THAT and type “gmail” in the search box that follows, and then click on the Gmail icon. Click the dark blue box that says “Send an email” and then enter your partner's email address in the “To address” field and then click the “Create Action” button.

Decide if you want a notification on your phone whenever this applet runs. If you don’t want to a push notification on your phone when the applet runs, then click on the switch to turn them off. Click the “Finish” button. Applets may be turned off anytime you don’t want them to run. Notifications can be very helpful in troubleshooting an Applet that isn't working as you expected, or if for example, your IFTTT Applet enables your home security system, you may wish to be notified when that Applet has successfully run.

As you begin to explore Smart Home products and the Internet of Things industry, one common theme you will encounter is the emphasis on digital security. We’re big proponents of this careful approach and we commend those that are vigil and further the effort to protect the public from becoming victims or unwitting participants in wide scale attacks like the Mirai Botnet, a malware that was discovered running on thousands of video cameras and routers that had not been secured with a strong password. The malware allowed devices to combine computing power to deliver a Distributed Denial of Service attack on Dyn, a popular Domain Name Service provider for many large companies on October 21, 2016. While damage was temporary, 73 big names brands like Amazon, Netflix, PayPal and Visa were forced offline for several hours by the attack. Not at all insignificant in scale.

Tell us something new

If at this point in our article, you’re already wondering how this affects your smart home or you’ve convinced yourself that is doesn’t because you only buy from reputable companies or you’ve invested in all Apple HomeKit products, you may be mistaken. If you are not using highly randomized passwords for your devices and smart home apps or if you have duplicated any passwords on any of the devices or services you use, you are at risk.

Rules are rules

The same password rules that apply to typical online behavior, also apply where the smart home is concerned.

A simple fact is, if you’re going to add IoT devices to your home and use apps on your smart devices, you’re going to need to provide an email address and password for every single one one of them, so begin as you mean to go on. Use a secure means of automatically generating and storing passwords. Do it from here forward.

Our favorite is the very popular LastPass, where you only need to remember a single complex password, and it takes care of the rest. Automatically generating highly randomized and unique passwords, LastPass then securely stores them in the cloud where they cannot be lost, and will never be of value for theft, because they are encrypted until the moment you view or copy them on your own device.


Be a part of the solution

Using secure password generation is a major step in securing the Internet of Things; One that is unfortunately left entirely up to the end consumer at this point, rather than in partnership with experts like LastPass or 1Password. For example, where in-app automatic generation, storage and autofill password are all possible from within iOS, we're not aware of any consumer Smart Home apps that currently support the feature aside from IFTTT. Look for the keyhole icon as shown in the password field of the IFTTT login screen for iOS below. This indicates that the app supports autofill from LastPass, so tapping the icon will automatically launch your LastPass app, allow you to login, and it will then fill-in the username and password fields for you and sign you into the app. If the app does not have this icon, you must manually enter the email address in the app, switch to LastPass, search for the account, copy the password, return to the app, paste it into the password field and sign in.

So the next time you buy a new smart home device, follow one of our How-to: articles, or use a new app that needs a user login, instead of allowing your activity to be tracked by Facebook, Twitter or Google with an OAuth login which may not be as secure as you are lead to believe, we recommend you use a free email account created just for smart home services, and then generate a random password with your password manager app. Do it for that extra email account and do it for every app that needs a unique password, which is all of them.

Important to note

LastPass has been evaluated and is trusted by security experts, plus it’s now free on all devices, so there’s no excuse not to use it.

To maintain privacy, prevent unwanted advertising and for possible home resale, we recommend you register your smart home devices and apps with a free email account from companies like Google that place strong emphasis on security of their user account and personal information.

Keep passwords long and random with special characters whenever allowed. The more complex the password, the more difficult it will be for software to reverse the protection put in place against such efforts. Since apps like LastPass store your passwords securely, you only need to copy and paste the password into the app when logging in.

Some devices and apps do not allow passwords to contain certain characters or exceed a certain length, but unfortunately the manufacturer will not always specify this and while the password may be accepted, you sometimes won’t be able log back in. We’ve also encounter situations where copy and paste of the password caused the account log-in to fail. Some of these situations are rare, and if you discover a limitation, we encourage you to reach out to the product or service support team to help them update their software to improve security and ease of use.

Have a comment or question? Please gives us your feedback in the comments sections and do join us in the discussion on Twitter @smarthomeprimer where you'll find us posting about the latest news in IoT and smart home innovations.