Google Assistant just got a whole lot smarter with IFTTT integration

If you’re an early adopter of the Pixel disappointed that one of its touchstone features, the Assistant, isn’t quite as smart as Google led you to believe, we have a solution of sorts.

Today, Google added itself to IFTTT’s (If This Then That) extensive database of integrations, allowing users to create and execute “recipes” through the Assistant itself.

For the uninitiated, IFTTT is a tool that allows disparate services to talk to one another. While Assistant will eventually work natively with many services, from Spotify to Philips Hue, right now the integrations are limited. IFTTT fills in those gaps by allowing you to use one input (in this case, Google Assistant) to execute an action (say, turning on your Philips Hue light bulbs).

Most of the early recipes are rudimentary but fun

Most of the early recipes are rudimentary but fun, like posting to Twitter or Facebook using your voice, or changing the color of your LIFX lightbulb. With time, though — and a bit of ingenuity — the recipes should become a lot more useful.

As Alex Dobie said in his Pixel review, “The reality is that Assistant is, at the time of writing, very much a version 1.0 product.” IFTTT integration does doesn’t get it to 2.0, but maybe to 1.2, which is a nice step in the right direction.

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