Anyone With Smart Lights Should Use IFTTT

You've no doubt explored the app that came along with your smart lights, and found several handy tricks within—from getting your lights to turn on at scheduled times, to cycling between different colors and brightness settings over the course of the day. There's plenty more you can do, however, with the help of IFTTT.

IFTTT (If This Then That) is a long-established web and mobile app for plugging different services into each other. It can, for example, automatically share Instagram photos to X (but only when a specific hashtag is used); forward SMS messages to your email; export Fitbit stats to Google Sheets; and plenty more—there are a wealth of options to explore.

The tool plugs into several smart-light platforms, too, including Philips Hue, Lifx, TP-Link, Nanoleaf, and Govee. That means you're able to link certain triggers from all kinds of apps and services to automated actions on your smart lights.

You can sign up for and use IFTTT free of charge. There are also Pro accounts available, which start at $3 a month: These give you access to more automations (known as applets), a greater selection of triggers and actions to choose from, access to AI enhancements, and a few additional features.

How to set up an IFTTT applet

It won't take you long to set up your first applet. Credit: Lifehacker

Once you've registered an account with IFTTT and got yourself into the web interface, you can start building applets. Click Create, then choose Add next to If This. This is the trigger that will kick the automation into action. It could be anything from a new message in Google Chat to a new track from your favorite band on SoundCloud. You can also use times and dates as triggers.

As you build your applet, you'll need to sign in to all the various services you're making use of, and give IFTTT access to your account credentials (which you can revoke at any time). If there's an app or service not available in IFTTT, it's most likely because there isn't an option for third-party plug-ins to attach themselves to it.

You'll often be given options for your trigger—if you're connecting Dropbox, for example, you can specify a particular folder that IFTTT monitors for activity. These options give you more fine-grained control over when triggers are launched, which can be useful in terms of controlling your smart lights.

With your trigger selected, you can choose your action: Click Add next to Then That. (For the purposes of this article, you'll want to connect your smart lights of choice, but there are plenty of other options for building applets—you can have emails sent to your inbox, or notifications sent to your phone.) The selection is slightly different for actions compared to triggers, and again, there are usually some customization options available.

You'll need to log in and connect any new apps or services you connect to, and then you're almost done. Click Continue for an overview of the new applet, then click Done to confirm. You can manage your active applets through the My Applets section of IFTTT. They can be temporarily paused or fully deleted whenever you like.

IFTTT applets to try with your smart lights

Now that you know how to build applets, you can turn your attention to your smart lights—ways to use your lights as an alternative notification system for something, rather than checking your phone or email. For these examples I'll use Philips Hue lights, as those are the ones I've got, but various smart platforms are supported.

You can, for example, get your smart lights to tell you about a new episode of your favorite podcast on Spotify. Choose Spotify and New followed show as the trigger, then set Philips Hue and Blink lights as the action. You don't have to blink the lights across your whole house—you can choose one individual light for this or any other action.

Get an alert every time there's a new podcast on Spotify. Credit: Lifehacker

Getting weather alerts is a fun one, because you can make use of the colors on your smart lights. Choose Weather Underground then Current condition changes to as the trigger, and select Rain as the condition (your location should be detected automatically). The trigger for Philips Hue lights then needs to be Change color—set it to "blue" to get rain warnings, or tweak the settings for any different conditions.

What about if your Android phone is in another room or in a desk and you want to know when it needs charging? Pick Android Battery then Low battery as the trigger, then Philips Hue and Set a scene in a room—you can specify a light change to warn you a recharge is needed. For this to work, you need the IFTTT Android app installed on your phone to monitor battery levels.

Another potentially useful way of using your lights is with your schedule. IFTTT lets you select Google Calendar and Any event starts as a trigger—you can then set a blink or a color change in the Philips Hue action to signify that an event is starting within a specified number of minutes. You can set this for a specific calendar in your account (like your meetings calendar), so you're not overwhelmed with notifications.

You can also connect IFTTT to your Google Calendar. Credit: Lifehacker

Or what about connecting your smart lights to your video doorbell? If you pick Ring and New Ring Detected as your trigger, the resulting action could then be a color or scene change on your Philips Hue lights, or a quick blink of some or all of them. If you don't have a doorbell you can hear easily, or instant access to your phone, this can be truly handy.

These are just a few options you can explore across the IFTTT platform, and there's a lot more that's possible. IFTTT plugs into iOS Shortcuts too, for example, giving you even more ways to mix and match your automated connections.

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