![]() ![]() your full mailing address - mine pastes in my address, correctly formatted for USPS standards.There’s just too many uses for TextExpander to try and catalog here, but I'll share a few that I particularly like. So, for example, if you’re sick of retyping a new email sig, you can store it in TE and assign “ emailsig” as the trigger to paste in the full text for you.Ī screenshot of the control panel, courtesy of the Smile on My Mac site: But, brother, is it ever easy to setup, modify, and use.Īt the heart of it, TE gives you system-wide text shortcuts that, when typed, explode into much longer bits of text or can even, say, paste in an image, like your scanned signature. Its functionality is not unique - users of, say, TextMate, TypeIt4Me, or Windows’ popular ActiveWords (Hi, Buzz), or for that matter, Vim, will recognize the similarities. ![]() I have to say, I just love TextExpander ( formerly “Texpander”). Named delimiters (space, tab, return, esc) appear in other languages.Abbreviations with characters requiring the Option key are fixed.If apart from text expansion, you’d like to automate your Mac to do everything but making you a fresh cup of coffee, you can't go wrong with Keyboard Maestro.TextExpander just got an update that adds a few features and fixes to this already essential OS X PreferencePane. Typinator won't disappoint you, and I have a lot more to share about this app in another (not written yet) post. Do a search for “text expansion” and you'll find plenty. There are enough apps filling that gap, many more than I mentioned here. TextExpander has received a lot of flack since they moved to a subscription model, and many users started looking for alternatives. They are both great apps that deliver on their promise, and which one you will ultimately choose depends on your preferences. In all fairness, my experience with TextExpander and TypeIt4me is more than a little dated. ![]() Read more about it in this (not written yet) post. In fact, I'm amazed that this is a niche no one has filled yet. While I love Typinator and all it can do for me, there’s one app from my Windows days I'm sorely missing. And if you choose the same abbreviation for multiple snippets, Keyboard Maestro presents you with a palette, so you can choose your expansion by pressing a key. This is what happens when I press " e". It misses a few handy features Typinator has, such as pressing the Command key to cancel the current expansion, but on the other hand, you can enhance your expansions with any amount of macro functionality you can dream of. That means you can use it for text expansion. Keyboard Maestro can type text for you and macros can be activated by typing a string. More about Typinator in another post (not written yet). The interface is easy, importing and exporting is a breeze, and it has many handy features. I've been using Typinator for 8 years now and I'm still very happy with it. TypeIt4Me is available on the Mac App Store for € 21,99 or €19,99 on their web site. So why try another one, right? No reason, other than that I spend a lot of time with my Mac and I like utilities. The app was easy to work with, Ettore Software was always quick to respond, my Word snippets imported without a hitch and switching expansion sets was relatively easy. That’s not very much but with all the other subscription apps out there, these little bits add up. TextExpander will set you back $3,33 per month if you pay annually. Since they switched to a subscription model, the app is no longer available in the App Store. It's only fair to say that TextExpander has many enthusiastic supporters. Support was friendly but unable to solve my problem, so I moved on. As far as I remember, that wasn't easy with TextExpander. That means I need to be able to switch abbreviation sets quickly and easily. I live in the Netherlands, and I write in Dutch as well as in English. You can download a trial version at Tran Ky Nam Software’s web site. With a price tag of $4.99 you can't go far wrong, though. I never got around to actually downloading this app. When I moved to the Mac, I checked out the following apps: I amassed thousands of snippets over the years, and thanks to my home-made export function I could transfer them to any text expansion app in a matter of seconds … well, maybe minutes. I could add snippets on the fly, search abbreviations and snippets with one keystroke, import and export snippets and much more. Although in my opinion, Microsoft made working with its Autocorrect unnecessarily time-consuming, I managed to speed things up considerably with VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). When working in Microsoft Word for Windows I used its Autocorrect function pretty much continuously. ![]()
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