IFTTT Shutting Down Alexa Integration :(

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I got an email this morning from IFTTT that their Amazon Alexa integration will be removed at the end of the month. Ughhh.

I heavily rely on it for two automations: one to add new tasks to Things and another to add new shopping list items to an iOS Reminders list that I share with my partner. I use these many times a day, especially for remembering to-dos.

I checked Zapier and Integromat/Make and neither of their Alexa integrations have triggers for when a new to-do or shopping item is added. The Alexa app’s routines don’t support those triggers either. Does anyone know of another service that can let me hook into those events?

I might try looking into Amazon’s APIs to see if I can write some code that polls for new list items (although I wouldn’t be surprised if they limit have often I can poll).

The last resort would be replacing all my Echos with HomePod Minis (or is that “HomePods Mini”?) but that’s going to be pricey.

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You know what, I received the same email. I did not think anything of it because I have been trying to cut my IFTTT cord for a while but this is one of my last remaining tablets that I have been using to keep my Alexa reminders and grocery list in sync with my grocery list on iOS

Now I am wondering about another solution to make sure that these stay synchronized.

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If I look in the Alexa app, there is native support for Todoist. I wonder if I can use a free account and some Applescript/Shortcuts magic to sync new items to Things and Reminders?

UPDATE: Looks like IFTTT has Todoist integration and triggers for when new items are added to it. I’ll have to experiment.

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I saw an article about someone using Make and Todoist to achieve that.

I can’t see the whole thing sadly but seems it’s getting to a similar idea to what you mentioned. I may try digging into building a skill to at least make the reminders available via a web request and then process them via Shortcuts but I haven’t had a full chance to get on the computer to look at the blueprints site or developer site for building a skill yet

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I have done some digging and seems we can probably make something work with use of Scriptable.

I’m doing some additional testing and development with it yet but overall it seems very doable

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Well, I was able to get it working in Scriptable. I think a few more error handling need to be added in yet but overall seems it’s working well.

I wonder how often this would need to run. I’m thinking maybe to trigger it when reminders app is opened and then it would be allowed to run the script once each hour or once every 15 minutes maybe. Thoughts?

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I was able to get the Alexa → Todoist → IFTTT approach working, although it can take a few minutes to run.

For anyone curious as to how I get the tasks from IFTTT into Things, I use IFTTT to write a file to Dropbox. I have Hazel running on a Mac Mini server and when it sees the file, it runs AppleScript to then add the task to Things.

I was using IFTTT’s native Reminders action to add items to my shopping list, but that broke recently, so I switched over. to the same Dropbox+Hazel approach.

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Glad you were able to get something working for your situation.

I only really use Reminders so I think once I refine my Scriptable setup a bit more, I’ll have it run frequently to make sure I have all the Alexa reminders moved over.

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For anyone interested in the method I came up with, you can see my other post here: