Do you have an awesome idea for a new Applet or are you loving an Applet that you’ve created? Then share your creativity and become a star in the IFTTT community by publishing your Applets!
There are millions of users on IFTTT and many of them are looking for Applets just like yours, so give publishing a try!
What’s a Published Applet?
When viewing a service page on IFTTT or searching through IFTTT Explore, you may have noticed a list of Applets presented to you. These are what we call “Published Applets”.
Published Applets are like templates. They are made by services and users to help you easily find the experience you are looking for as well as discover other popular and valuable ways to connect things.
Why Publish Applets?
Publishing your Applets makes them available for others to discover and use. It’s fun, easy, and has many benefits:
- Easily share your Published Applets with friends, family, followers, and others!
- Express your creativity and get recognized for it! Services often feature user-published Applets on their social media channels and websites, giving you and your creativity a big shoutout! Your Applets also have a chance to appear on service pages and on IFTTT Explore.
- Track how many other users have discovered your Applet and found it useful. You’ll find how many users have enabled your Published Applet in the bottom left corner of the Applet card.
- More perks to come for users whose Published Applets get a large number of enables!
How to publish Applets
If you haven’t already, start out by learning what an Applet is and how to create one yourself.
Once you’ve created your Applet, test that it works and make any final changes to the Applet’s settings, name, and description. To ensure that your Applet gets the most use, follow our guidelines and recommendations for:
Important: An Applet's field labels and field visibility settings cannot be changed after it is published; however, you can change your Published Applet’s name and description at any time. You can edit any of these settings by clicking “Edit” in the top right of the Applet preview page.
Once you’re happy with how your Applet is configured, you’re ready to publish.
Go to your My Applets tab, select one of your created Applets, and click "Publish".
Scroll to the bottom of the following page and click "Publish":
Congratulations! You’ve just published your Applet!
Note: When you publish an Applet, your service connections and personal data remain private, like your location and account details.
Naming your Applet
Properly naming your Applet will make it easier for other users to find it, as well as understand what your Applet does for them.
When naming your Applet, be sure to include the names of the services it uses.
Example:
- “When my Arlo camera senses motion, turn on my Hue lights” is a better title than “If my camera senses motions, turn on my lights.” Most users looking for this use case will be using search terms like “Arlo” or “Hue”.
Make sure your Applet’s name also gives users a general idea of what it will do for them. If someone saw your Applet’s title without seeing the details of its trigger, queries, and actions, could they understand what it does? If not, then it's a good idea to add more information.
Describing your Applet
All Published Applets need to have a description. Your description is the ideal place to tell users why they should enable your Applet, and can provide them with any special instructions for setting it up.
While editing your Applet, you will also see an “Applet service” setting below the description field. This setting allows you to choose the service page that you want your Applet to be listed under. Your Applet card will also adopt the primary brand color of the service that you select. Select the service that best fits the theme of your Applet!
What are field labels and field visibility settings, and how do I use them?
If your Published Applet requires personalization or a service connection, then any user that wishes to enable your Published Applet will be asked to set up their own configuration.
You can choose which trigger, query, and action fields can or cannot be customized by the user enabling your Applet.
You can also edit the default field labels to best guide users in correctly setting up their Applet.
Important: Make sure to configure these settings before publishing your Applet. Applet field labels and field visibility settings cannot be changed after it is published. You can edit these settings by clicking “Edit” in the top right of the Applet preview page.
Let’s say you are creating an Applet to receive a reminder when you leave home. This Applet will utilize the You exit an area trigger from the Location service. By default, the location field label will display “Locate an area.” You can instead edit this default label to display “Home Address” so that your Applet can better instruct the user on what location they should use.
You can then set the visibility options for this field. Because everyone’s home address is unique, each user should be allowed to set the trigger location to their own home address. You can make this possible by setting the visibility of the “Home Address” field to “Customizable by the user”.
On the other hand, let’s say you’re creating an Applet that will remind you to bring an umbrella when leaving your home if it’s forecasted to rain. You might want this message to be standard for all users. Therefore, you would enter your desired message into the appropriate field, then select the “Set by you” visibility setting. Your Applet’s message will now be the same for all users enabling your Applet, and they will not be given the option to change its contents.
Pro Tip: There is a balance to keep in mind between how much you allow users to customize versus the ease with which you want users to enable your Published Applet.
For example, let's say you plan on sharing an Applet with all of your Twitter followers that will change the color of their lights whenever you post a tweet. This Applet will utilize the New tweet by a specific user trigger from the Twitter service and the Change color action from the Philips Hue service.
When you’re configuring this Applet’s settings, it makes sense to set the “Username to watch” field for the Twitter trigger to be your Twitter handle only and not allow users to customize it. However, it’s likely best to let users customize which of their lights should be controlled via the Which lights? field and what color they want the light to change to via the Color value field for the Philips Hue action.
How to share your Applets
Now that your Applet is published, it's time to share it. If you’ve named your Applet effectively, then it will likely appear in user searches and on service pages.
You can also share it directly with your friends, family, and social media followers. In the IFTTT App, you can use the Sharing icon located on the top right of your Applet.
On the IFTTT website, you can go to your Published Applets tab, click on an Applet, then copy and share the Applet’s URL located in your browser’s address bar.
Publishing Applets FAQ
Why can’t I publish my Applet?
Here are a few possible reasons:
- The Applet must have a description.
- Applets using the Webhooks service can't be published.
- All services used in the Applet must be published.
Why can’t I publish my Applet from the IFTTT app?
The IFTTT app does not currently support publishing an Applet. Users who wish to publish the Applets they build must do so on the IFTTT website.
If I archive a Published Applet, will it remain published?
No. If a Published Applet is archived by its Creator, then it is no longer accessible to other users.
If I make changes to a Published Applet, will other users be affected?
It depends on what kind of changes you make. Changes to an Applet’s title or description will not result in any interruption to other users.
Changes to a Published Applet’s trigger, query, filter code, or action components can’t be made once the Applet is published. In order to make changes to the Applet’s trigger, query, filter code, or action components, you will need to archive the Applet. Then, start over with a duplicate. If you archive the Applet, then any users who have enabled this Applet will see it archived. They will need to enable the new Applet.