Your Wish Is the Flic Smart Button's Command

LAS VEGAS—Buttons have been getting smarter. Amazon'southward fleet of physical smart buttons let y'all gild Tide or Cheerios, while the Misfit Wink Link tracks calories, steps, and tin control your smartphone's music or photographic camera shutter. Now, Sweden-based Shortcut Labs is showing off a smart Bluetooth-enabled button called Flic, which lets y'all do simply about anything, from setting the mood for movie dark to alerting others to your location through your phone's GPS.

CES 2022 Bug Art Crowdfunded with Indiegogo, Flic is basically, similar the company proper name implies, a shortcut for various actions and situations that y'all can assign with an accompanying app. You can attach three different actions to the Flic, which you can then activate by clicking, double-clicking, or holding. I tried pressing a couple Flic buttons. Like every good button should, they have a satisfying click and squishy feedback thank you to a silicone coating. One Flic turned on a Philips Hue light and cycled through its colors. Another activated a Sonos speaker. Flic Smart Button All the same another snapped pics of showgoers with a webcam and posted them to Twitter. Each task happened the moment I pressed the quarter-sized button.

With the app, which looked attractive and easy to employ, you tin assign an action to a Flic by tapping a "plus" icon and choosing from a long listing of apps and services. I noticed IFTTT, Facebook, Nest, Skype, Spotify, and many others are compatible with Flic. Potentially, you could set up a Flic for grandma so that pressing it opens Skype for her. Or have your lights and temperature automatically adjust when you enter a room and printing the button. Information technology can do simpler tasks, too, like human action as a remote for your smartphone camera or ring your telephone if you've lost it. And if you've lost yourself, or you're in an emergency, Flic can share your location, send a distress text, or sound an alarm.

This kind of SOS technology, similar to the Fitkat trackers, sounds helpful for the elderly, actually young, and more tech-averse among us. Or, really, for anyone who wants to simplify technology. Why carp with an app or a smartphone when you lot can but click a push? Then again, someone will accept to set it all up—and pay for it. One Flic costs $34 while a prepare of four goes for $99. That'due south pretty steep for a set up of buttons.

Uniform with Android or iOS, Flic comes in a few colors, including black, bluish, dark-green, and white. You lot can pre-order it now.

About Timothy Torres

Timothy Torres

Timothy Torres is a Junior Analyst on PCMag's consumer electronics team. He covers wearables, digital home, and diverse cool gadgets including the occasional video game. He has written all manner of re-create for Calculator Shopper, The Jersey Journal, Radio One, Random Business firm, and 2D-X. Before inbound the tech globe, he attended New York Academy and worked in education as an art instructor. In his spare fourth dimension he dabbles in theater, sketches comics, eats a lot of sushi and watches too many movies. Twitter: @pleasedtomeetya