If you set up a timer on the Amazon Echo and walk out of the room, you may not hear the timer go off. The good news is that you can receive a push notification on your phone when the timer’s up, no matter where you are.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a built-in feature on the Echo. You’ll need to use an online service called If This Then That (IFTTT), which you can hook up to your Amazon Echo to do all sorts of cool stuff.
If you haven’t used IFTTT before, check out our guide to getting started for info on how to create an account and connect apps and services. Then, come back here to create the necessary applet. Start by heading to IFTTT’s home page and click “My Applets” at the top of the page.
Next, click on “New Applet”.
Click on “This” highlighted in blue.
Type in “Alexa” in the search box or scroll down and find it in the list of products and services below that. Click on it when you locate it.
Go through the process of connecting Alexa to IFTTT if it isn’t already. After that, you’ll choose a trigger. In this case, you’ll want to click on “Your timer goes off”.
Next, click on “That” highlighted in blue.
Type in “Notifications” in the search box or scroll down and find it in the list of products and services below that. Click on it when you locate it.
On the next screen, click on “Send a notification”. Keep in mind that you’ll need the IFTTT app installed on your phone (available on iOS and Android) with notifications enabled.
By default, your notification will say “The timer you created at XX:XX, went off at XX:XX”. However, you can customize this to say whatever you want. I like to go with a simple “Your Echo timer went off!”. When you’re done with that, click on “Create Action”.
On the next screen, hit “Finish”.
At that point, you’re all good to go, and whenever you start a timer on your Amazon Echo, you’ll receive a push notification on your phone from IFTTT letting you know that the timer reached zero.
There is a five second delay or so from the time your Echo’s timer goes off to when you receive the push notification, so if urgency is critical for you, then you’ll want to keep that in mind. Otherwise, this is a great way to have your Echo’s timer sort of follow you around the house, so you’ll know when time’s up even if you’re not within earshot.
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