IFTTT, the tool that lets you automate your digital life, can help any parent whose mental load has reached max capacity — and you kind of feel like a tech magician every time you use it. Here are some great IFTTT applets that can make parenting easier.

(If you’re new to the service, check out our beginner’s guide to understand the basics.)

Whether you have friends or family members who work and live different schedules than you, or you find yourself sending more “happy belated birthday” messages than you’d like, having the ability to schedule text messages ahead of time is an incredibly useful feature.

Woe is the Chrome user who has an overflowing Bookmark Bar - or worse, that single folder they use to store anything interesting they see online.

I love automation; I do. I just think it's the most fun thing ever to walk into my house and have my smart lights immediately pull up some colourful scene — not to mention all the absurd configurations I can create that changes their colours and brightness when certain things happen, ranging from "I got a tweet" to "It's midnight why are you still awake go to bed."

Pervasive as Facebook is, not everyone uses the social service. Maybe they hate social networking, or they're frustrated with Facebook's continual privacy "oopsies," or they're not technologically savvy. How can you share content outside of Facebook's (somewhat) walled garden?

If This Then That is great for everything from managing your savings to hacking your Gmail, but did you know you can also use it to find free video games?

There are dozens of applets (IFTTT's name for any combination of triggers and actions used through the service) designed to help you track gaming giveaways.

When we rounded up our staff's Weekly Upgrades last Saturday, our editors were introducing more plant life into our environments, cracking the code to Instagram-worthy Halloween costumes, quitting coffee, and clearing out browser clutter.

If you think back to your high school geometry class, you might remember that "If/Then" statements were used in solving mathematical proofs. But even if maths wasn't your thing, you actually use If/Then statements every day: "If it's raining outside, then I will bring an umbrella." Or, "If I eat this doughnut, then I will be very guilt- um, happy."

Ever get epic ideas while you're in the car? If so, you've probably struggled to figure out how to jot down those ideas without swerving into oncoming traffic. It can be a distraction for sure, but one Redditor has a useful suggestion that involves one of our favourite tools: IFTTT.

iOS: If This Then That (IFTTT), one of our favourite automation services, introduced support for both the iOS Calendar and App Store today.

Earlier this month, IFTTT (If This Then That) changed its automation platform into a more sophisticated tool. Rather than using one-dimensional "recipes" that trigger actions when certain conditions are met, the company launched something entirely new called "applets." The new applets allow users to create multiple actions from a single condition and filter conditions. In short, it makes it easier to create complicated conditional statements.

If This Then That, one of the best automation tools out there, is getting a big overhaul today that changes some of the fundamental ways the service works. The biggest change comes in rebranding its recipe system so it now allows one trigger to connect to multiple services.

Android/iOS/Web: Microsoft's IFTTT competitor Flow has been in beta for the better part of 2016, but it wasn't quite fully-baked yet. Now, the company is ready to release it to the world and it's starting to look good.

The idea of a machine that talks to you intelligently might be a ways off still, but Instructables user MisterM wanted to make a radio that would announce general details throughout the day. To do this, he wired up a Raspberry Pi Zero to a text-to-speech engine, then tossed in a dose of If This Then That.

Fitbits alone won't make you healthy, but the more you see the data, the better understanding you can have of what you need to do. Over at Initial State, they made a guide that creates a big dashboard of all your Fitbit data so you can easily see it visualised.

Spend a lot of time playing indoor games where you're keeping track of points? It sucks to have to stop the action to draw a line on a chalkboard, which is why Instructables user JeffreyLoucks created his own voice controlled scoreboard system using an Alexa and IFTTT.

Connecting all the webapps and services you use and making them work together for you is all the rage, but the two established services for doing so, IFTTT and Zapier, are now joined by a new heavyweight: Microsoft Flow. It's time to compare these three powerful options to see which is the best, and for whom.

Wouldn't it be cool if your phone knew to enter aeroplane mode when you go to the theatre, or text your spouse when you leave work? IFTTT and Tasker can automate countless tasks like these to turn your phone into an attentive personal assistant. Today, we're putting them both in the ring to see which one's better at simplifying your life.

Getting started in the world of home automation may seem daunting, but it’s actually fairly simple. Depending on your goals, it can also be quite affordable, and even save you money over time. A smart home isn’t just some automatic lights either - there are loads of options to make day to day life that little bit easier.