If you’re anything like me, you love watching James Bond movies. The villains often would have big desks with buttons that do crazy things like have a saw drop from the ceiling and cut their cigar. This can be your life too, if only you had NFC tags.
“What’s an NFC tag?” you’re asking. Well it’s pretty simple, it’s a small piece of plastic with a tiny little thing in it that uses magic to do whatever you want it to. The truth is, I have no idea what it’s made of or really how it works; I DO understand it’s power though. NFC stands for Near Field Communication, and it’s everywhere. Ever use Apple Pay, or hold your credit card near the thing and it just connects? Yeah, that’s NFC.
Here’s the thing though, it sounds fancy (and it probably is) but it’s actually really cheap to get into. It can help you turn dumb devices into smart devices (sort of) and get you one step closer to world domination.
Living Your Greatest Villain Era
So what exactly are you going to do with this? Well, whatever you want. That’s a terrible answer I know, but it’s the truth. In the simplest terms, NFC tags are a trigger; they are a thing to tell your phone to do something. Instead of being a digital trigger (such as receiving an email, or hitting a certain time of day) they are a physical trigger when your phone comes in close proximity (within about an inch) to the NFC tag.
So a few use cases of why you want a physical trigger:
- Work Mode: you could set up an NFC tag to change your “focus mode” of your phone to a “work” mode when you get near, which can limit notification and show certain apps
- Timer: I attached one to the side of my washer that launches a 60 min timer so that I can remember to change the laundry (thereby, sort of turning a dumb device, smarter). Does this control my washer? No, but it overcomes the biggest challenge of remembering to change the laundry over.
- Night stand: you could attached one to the side of your night stand so that it turns off all of your smart lights and turns on “Careless Whisper” so that you can dream in color. Hey, it’s your world.
- Order more cat food: You could set up an NFC tag at the bottom of the cat food container to remind you to order more cat food. Your cat would probably not want you to wait until it’s empty, but the vet says they could lose a few pounds.
- Alarm: Having trouble getting up each day? Put an NFC tag across the room that turns off your alarm. Now you’re out of bed. You’re welcome?
You can do all of this stuff with your phone, but physical tags makes repeatable and consistent tasks quicker. They are really good for things you do often. With this in mind, they might also be a great way for you to start a habit; they are easy to use and force you to do something to get the trigger.
There are certainly limits to what you can do, but you get the point. The more “smart” devices you have in your home, the more you’ll be able to control, but that doesn’t mean you HAVE to have that stuff. Your phone has a lot of features that can really make your life easier. This is one of those areas that the more time you put in, the more you can do.
The best part? This is annoyingly cheap to get into (as long as you already have the expensive phone).
Getting Started with NFC
To get started, you really need three things:
- NFC Tags
- NFC Supported Smart Phone
- NFC Application (sometimes)
NFC Tags
These are the magic parts of the equation that you probably don’t have. I’ll leave a few links below for suggestions, but there are probably 1,000 different choices. The big thing is the size and application that you plan to use them in. I bought a bag of 40 pieces for around $12. They are little quarter-sized white pieces of plastic with sticky glue on one side to stick it to almost everything. They don’t require batteries (again, it’s magic) so you can get versions that are credit card size.
Here are some examples of NFC tags from Amazon (full transparency, these are affiliate links so I may make a small commission if you purchase these):
- 40pcs NFC Tags – Hard Plastic – White
- 60pcs NFC Tags – Stickers – White
- 20pcs NFC Cards – Credit Card size – White
NFC Supporting Smart Phone
Most current smart phones have an NFC reader built in; iPhones X and newer have NFC readers that can be used for this purpose (older iPhones have NFC readers that may need additional software to support). I’m running an iPhone 11 and it works well on that device.
NFC Application
There’s probably a lot of questionable smart phone applications out there to control NFC tags, but you don’t really need them if you have Apple Shortcuts. Android users, you’re on your own.
Apple Shortcuts is easy to use but also really tough. It’s one of those programs that I’ll cover at some point, but it can be kinda daunting to initially get into. That’s why I suggest starting small and building from there. A really great resource for starting to build Shortcuts for NFC tags is:
Brett : Tech & Smart Home (TikTok) or
Chat GPT (website)
Other helpful resources
Check out the post on ways to automate your life (link).