Released earlier this week, IFTTT for iOS 1.2 improves on native Reminders and Photos integration by allowing users to create recipes that save new items into the Reminders and Photos apps. Previously, IFTTT could only read data from Reminders and Photos and use that as a trigger for other actions.

I wanted to wait a couple of days before posting about this update to test how frequently the new background refresh API in iOS 7 would let IFTTT check for triggers and launch recipes. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen notable changes in execution times – for instance, bookmarks that I add on Pinboard sometimes take about an hour to be added to Reminders. My understanding is that IFTTT isn’t using silent push notifications to instantly trigger recipes in your account, therefore iOS 7 background app refresh can make the app check for updates more often in the long term, but that will require several weeks of testing. Thus, I’m happy to keep testing the feature and report back.

The improved Reminders and Photos integration is very nice. You can add new photos from URLs, create reminders into a specific list, and even set a priority for them. I wouldn’t rely on Reminders integration to save work-related tasks, but I find it very useful to let IFTTT check on, say, Instagram or Facebook from time to time and save the photos I want locally on my device.

I’m still impressed by what IFTTT is doing with their iOS app, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next for iOS 7 background sync.