We tested these 24 Applets so you don't have to

Look, we get it. You've got 47 browser tabs open, a to-do list that hasn't been touched since Tuesday, and approximately zero minutes to spend figuring out which automations are actually worth setting up.

That's where IFTTT (If This Then That) comes in. It's the platform that quietly connects your apps and devices behind the scenes, so your morning routine runs itself, your savings grow without thinking about it, and that book you've been meaning to read actually makes it onto your nightstand. Set it up once, and it handles the small stuff while you focus on what actually matters.

And with thousands of Applets (our pre-built automations) to choose from, we know the hardest part isn't using IFTTT, it's knowing where to start.

So we did what any reasonable team would do: we locked ourselves in a room (metaphorically), ran 24 Applets through their paces, and came back with the honest truth about what works, what surprised us, and what we'd never go back to doing manually.

Consider this your cheat sheet.

More time for what matters, less time managing the rest

The best part about automation isn't that it makes you more productive, it's that it gives you back the mental space to actually enjoy your day. When the small stuff runs itself, you stop burning energy on things that never needed your attention in the first place.

Think about how much of your day goes toward tasks that are repetitive, forgettable, and honestly a little boring. Checking in on your expenses, remembering to schedule something, staying on top of the news. None of it is hard, but all of it adds up. IFTTT connects your apps and devices so those things just happen, and you get to focus on the parts of your day that actually need you in them.

Wake up to a smarter morning

There's a version of your morning where you're not scrambling. Where the information you actually need is already waiting for you, the week ahead feels manageable before it's even started, and you sit down to your coffee with a sense of intention rather than a vague feeling that you've already fallen behind.

When we first set these four Applets up, we didn't expect much. A horoscope in your inbox sounds like a nice-to-have at best. A meal plan email on Sunday morning sounds like something you'd enable and ignore after the second week. But what we actually found was that having those things land without any effort on our part changed the texture of the morning in a way that was hard to put into words. The whole experience felt calmer and more deliberate, with less of the low-level anxiety that comes from feeling like you haven't caught up yet and the day has barely started.

The weekly New York Times digest was the one that surprised us most. We'd all been opening the app every morning and closing it twenty minutes later having read nothing properly. Getting the week's articles in one place on a Sunday meant we actually read them, properly, with enough time to think about what we were reading.

These four Applets won't overhaul your morning routine. They'll just handle the parts of it that were never worth your attention in the first place, so you can spend that energy on the parts that are.

Take back control of your attention

Here's something worth sitting with: most of the interruptions that derail your day weren't urgent. They were just loud. A notification here, a buzzing phone there, a call that bleeds into your next meeting before you've had a chance to think. Over time, all of that fragmented attention adds up to a workday that felt busy but didn't feel particularly productive.

Testing these Applets was a bit of a reality check for us. The #mute email Applet came in handy more times than we'd like to admit, mostly in those frantic thirty seconds before a meeting where you're already seated and your phone is at the bottom of your bag.

The Do Not Disturb Applet was the one that generated the most conversation internally, because once we started using it we realized how rarely we'd been giving ourselves proper transition time between calls. That breathing room turned out to matter more than we expected.

The AI focus block Applet was the most interesting to test because the results were different for everyone on the team. For some of us it surfaced scheduling gaps we hadn't noticed. For others it just confirmed what we already knew but weren't acting on. Either way, having the blocks show up in the calendar automatically meant they actually got protected instead of getting quietly sacrificed to whatever came up next.

Build better money habits without the effort

Managing money well has very little to do with how much you earn and a lot to do with the small decisions you make consistently over time. The problem is that most of those decisions require enough effort that they stop happening the moment life gets busy. You mean to check for deals before you buy something but you forget. You tell yourself you'll put a little aside this month but the transfer never happens. You split an expense with a friend and lose track of who owes what before anyone's had a chance to settle up.

We'll be honest: the Slickdeals digest was the one we were most skeptical about going in. It felt like something that would either save you money or become a daily temptation to spend it. In practice it landed closer to the former, mostly because having the deals arrive in one email at a set time felt a lot more manageable than the alternative of checking the site and falling into a rabbit hole.

The Splitwise to Discord Applet was the sleeper hit of this group. For anyone splitting bills with roommates or a travel group, having every new expense show up in a shared channel removed an entire category of awkward follow-up conversations.

The Instagram savings Applet was the one that made us think differently about what automation can do. The idea that a habit you already have, posting on social media, could be helping you build toward a financial goal automatically is exactly the kind of thing that sounds gimmicky until you see the balance growing.

The task setup that actually keeps up with you

The problem with most task management systems isn't the system itself. It's the gap between where tasks are created and where they actually need to live. You get assigned something in Trello but your to-do list is in Todoist. You add a reminder on your phone but it never makes it to your calendar. You leave a meeting with three follow-ups in your head and by the time you sit back down, one of them has already slipped.

What struck us most when testing these Applets was how much mental energy we'd been spending moving information between tools that should have been talking to each other all along. The Google Calendar to Todoist Applet was the one that changed our workflow most noticeably. Meetings that used to generate a separate round of task creation just produced the tasks automatically, and by the end of the first week we'd stopped noticing it entirely, which is exactly the point.

The Trello to Todoist Applet was particularly valuable for anyone working in a team environment. Instead of having to check the board to know when something new had landed, the task was already in Todoist and the notification had already gone out. The number of things that slipped through the cracks dropped noticeably within the first few days of running it.

These four Applets connect the tools you're already using so your task management actually reflects reality in real time, without requiring you to constantly move information around yourself.

The smartest way to feed your curiosity

Most people don't have a reading problem. They have an organization problem. The articles are out there, the books are available, the subreddits and RSS feeds and highlight collections are full of genuinely interesting things. The issue is that getting from "I want to read more" to actually reading more involves enough friction that it's easier to just scroll instead.

Running these Applets for a week made it obvious how much reading time we'd been losing to the organizational side of things. The RSS to iOS Applet was the one that changed our habits most dramatically. Having new content show up as a reminder, a calendar event, and a reading list entry all at once felt like overkill at first, but in practice it meant the articles we actually cared about never got buried.

The Bluesky and RSS Applet was the one that generated the most enthusiasm internally, mostly because anyone who has been building an audience on Bluesky knows how much manual effort goes into keeping your feed populated with fresh content. Having new RSS items post automatically meant that side of things took care of itself entirely.

The r/FreeEBOOKS digest was the unexpected standout of the group. We added more books to our reading lists in the first week of running it than we had in the previous month, and the daily email format meant we were browsing the offers intentionally rather than stumbling across them randomly.

These four Applets handle the organizational side of reading so you can focus on the actual reading. The content finds you, the highlights end up somewhere useful, and the free books land in your inbox instead of passing by unnoticed.

Take better care of yourself, automatically

Most people aren't struggling to care about their health. They're struggling to keep track of it. You go for a run but forget to log it anywhere useful. You wake up exhausted but have no real data to explain why. You hit a fitness goal and feel good about it for approximately five minutes before the next thing takes over. The information is there, it's just scattered across apps that don't talk to each other and moments that pass before you've had a chance to act on them.

What made this group of Applets genuinely interesting to test was how much they changed our relationship to data we were already generating. The Oura Ring readiness score landing in your inbox each morning sounds like a small thing, but having it show up without having to open the app meant we actually read it and adjusted our day accordingly rather than ignoring it entirely.

The Strava to Google Calendar Applet was the one that surprised us most: seeing your activities sitting alongside your meetings gave the week a completely different shape and made it a lot easier to spot when you'd been neglecting movement for too long.

The Monzo savings Applet tied it all together in a way we didn't expect. Knowing that completing a Strava activity was moving money toward a goal added a layer of motivation that had nothing to do with fitness and everything to do with the satisfying feeling of two good habits reinforcing each other at the same time.

What we actually learned

Testing 24 Applets back to back taught us something we didn't expect: the best automations aren't the ones that impress you, they're the ones you stop noticing. The Applets that stuck around in our setup weren't the cleverest or the most complex. They were the ones that fit so naturally into our day that removing them would have felt like losing something.

The pattern that kept showing up was this: the Applets worth keeping don't just save you a step, they save you from having to think about the step at all. There's a real difference between those two things, and once you feel it, it changes how you look at automation entirely.

You don't need to run 24 at once. That's the beauty of IFTTT: you can start as small as you want, with one Applet that speaks to something you're already finding annoying, give it a week, and see what changes. From there, building out the rest of your setup happens naturally. Chances are you'll wonder why you waited this long.