Your Amazon Alexa IFTTT automations are about to stop working

The team behind IFTTT (short for “if this, then that”) wrote in a blog post that Amazon is cutting the service off from Alexa beginning October 31st. Once the integration is severed, users won’t be able to ask Alexa to trigger IFTTT applets. Certain automations will stick around in the IFTTT app, but some will be archived on November 1st unless you take action.

If your IFTTT applets use a specific phrase or question as the trigger (“Alexa, trigger…” or “Alexa, what’s on my to-do list?”), that will convert to using an IFTTT button widget that you can either use in the app or add to your smartphone’s homescreen. But all other triggers set up through Alexa — say, an automation that runs when you add something to your to-do list — will be archived. You will also have to remove any Alexa ingredients from your applets or they’ll stop working.

In the early days of smart home automation (well, as expressed through Apple, Amazon, and Google), IFTTT was a powerful, versatile tool. It might have been a little slow, but it was crucial thanks to the massive amount of third-party apps and services it connected with.

But these days, there are powerful built-in solutions, like Apple Shortcuts, that are more deeply integrated, more reliable, faster, and importantly, don’t need a subscription to get the most out of them. (There’s a free tier, but it’s hampered by a two-applet limit and automations run slower.) IFTTT still has a lot of versatility, though, and the company has been trying to keep up with new features like AI integration.

Now I’m nostalgic. I’m… probably going to play around with IFTTT later today.