If you are a writer like me or just someone who types a lot, then it’s a no-brainer to use a text expander application. For instance, when you are typing you will come across some big words, phrases, sentences, certain email responses, signatures, etc., that you have to type multiple times a day. In these situations, a text expander will help you quickly fill in rather than you typing in the stuff manually each and every time. In case you are wondering, a text expander is a simple application that lets you type shorter character sequence in place of the actual words, phrases, and sentences. These character sequences will be automatically expanded in real time into full words, phrases or even entire sentences depending on your configuration.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that text expansion is a must for any Mac user who spends hours at end with their fingers on the keyboard. But the best text expander app according to the Mac.
Best Apps For Mac
Also known as text template, text shortcut, text expansion tool. Download for Windows. Getting from Microsoft is recommended. 10.9 - 10.15 Catalina. Unlimited 21-Days Trial Buy $4.99. Version 2.36.5 for Mac OS X 10.6 - 10.15 Catalina. Released 15/9/2020. Version 1.5.4 for Windows 10 and 7. All you need is a text expander app and a few minutes to write down snippets of text you type out often, and you'll start shaving seconds off your day almost instantly. There's a wide variety of text expansion apps: aText, TextExpander, TypeIt4Me, PhraseExpress, PhraseExpander, Breevy, and even the text replacement tool built into your. I’m wondering why native macOS text expansion feature (Preference → Keyboard → Text) doesn’t work in the Mac app. This is more curios because iOS and iPadOS apps are allowing it. To elaborate a bit, macOS has a native text expansion feature and it’s pretty handy and the list syncs between iOS and macOS, so you can set a expansion like.
So, folks, these are the best text expansion apps for Mac. We believe now you have an idea why we chose TextExpander as the best solution for text expansion. If you are ready to pay for productivity, it seems to be the best choice. 'The Best Text Expansion App' - LifeHacker aText accelerates your typing by replacing abbreviations with frequently used phrases you define. Serato scratch live 3 manual. Make an abbreviation “myname” to insert your name “First Middle Last” in any application.
Text Expander Apps for Windows (Free) 1. (Freemium) PhraseExpress is yet another powerful and advanced application for Windows that is available in both free and paid versions. Along with the regular text expansion features, it also has other features like Dynamic phrases, date and time stamps, end-to-end phrase file encryption, sharing snippets with teams and users, various Windows automation tools, clipboard manager, system-wide auto correction depending on your writing style, etc. As you can tell, PhraseExpress is much more than a simple text expander. If you are looking for a free and dedicated text expanding application, the PhraseExpress is for you. Pros: PhraseExpress is free for personal use, and it is cross-platform.
You can also download the portable version if need be. Cons: Due to all the features you get, there is a learning curve. Pricing: There is a free version. For paid users, PhraseExpress offers three different plans with $49.95, $139.95, and $219 for Standard, Professional, and Enterprise licenses. Features you get in the paid version: With the paid version you will get access to some advanced features like sharing, desktop menus, MS Word formatted phrases, Clip Collections, SQL Server support, etc. You can see the complete feature list here.
AutoHotKey is the best and my most favorite software for Windows. That being said, Unlike the others on the list, AutoHotkey is not so much as a dedicated text expander but a macro-creation and automation tool for Windows. However, if all you want is a simple text expansion with no added features, then AutoHotkey is for you. Using AutoHotkey is nothing hard but you should be comfortable with scripting as you need to manually script what words or sentences you want to expand. To get started, install AutoHotkey, and try it out.
You can open the script with any text editor to see the instructions in it. So, if you are a bit adventurous and don’t mind scripting then do give AutoHotkey a try.
Again, this is not a dedicated text expander. But you won’t be disappointed when you see how much AutoHotkey can do.
Pros: Open source, light-weight and must have software for every Windows user. Cons: Not a dedicated text expander and requires you to be comfortable with its own scripting language. It is not cross-platform compatible. Google Chrome is one of the most used browsers and has a ton of extension for almost anything you can imagine. In fact, Google Chrome even has dedicated apps that behaves just like your regular program but will stay within the browser environment.
Best Text Expansion App For Windows
As such, if you are an avid Google Chrome user and does all the writing or just want the text expansion feature within the browser then you don’t have to use a dedicated application that you need to install on your Windows system. Rather, you can install a free Google Chrome extension called Auto Text Expander.
Set a large font size. • Type your text within the text box on the slide. • From the Home tab, select the font you want to use. Choose a thick font so that more of the picture is visible inside the text. • Select the text on the slide. • Go to Ribbon > Insert > Text Box and draw a text box on your slide.
As you can tell from the name itself, it does just that. I.e, expand text according to your configurations and settings.
The best thing about this extension is that it has no complex settings, and supports both rich and regular text expansion. Moreover, it also supports custom cursor placement, text expansion inside Chrome Omnibox (address bar), date and time macros, clipboard paste macro, auto capitalization while expanding text, etc. Since the extension uses JSON format, you can easily import and export text expansion shortcuts.
Text expansion is the embodiment of everything that’s great about modern computers. It helps you get stuff done faster, easier, better than it was possible before. https://ameblo.jp/brochwetrieclif1988/entry-12639566887.html. Text expansion works like this – you type a keyword – a snippet of text and it gets expanded automatically to a much bigger block of text. Mac download imessages from iphone 2017.
Yes, you need to pre-configure these things but in the end you emerge victorious and smarter. And because these are computers after all, you can do a bit of programming magic. Nothing fancy – just basic stuff. A shortcut to type in the today’s date or the current time. Things like that.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that text expansion is a must for any Mac user who spends hours at end with their fingers on the keyboard. But the best text expander app according to the Mac community (and the podcast sponsor reads I hear every other day), is TextExpander. https://vitiodu.hatenablog.com/entry/2020/11/23/181042. Good for them, but this app costs $45. If you are willing to spend that much, go ahead, you will not be disappointed (I’ve tried the demo version). https://liaactec.hatenablog.com/entry/2020/11/23/213903.
But if you can’t, and you’re looking for something basic anyway, there’s aText for you. It does a lot of what TextExpander does, reliably, at just $4.99. Now that you’ve hurriedly bought the app, let’s see how to use the thing.
Using aText
aText will be running in the background. Always. You’ll see the app’s icon in the menu bar. Click it and choose Open aText to bring up the app’s homescreen. This is where you’ll configure your snippets.
You’ll be happy to know that aText has already taken the time to create many boilerplate snippets for you. Things like Thank You Very Much, On My Way! and more. If you’re a web developer, you’ll find an entire folder dedicated to HTML shorthand. Plus, the macros for typing in the date and time are also available here.
Suggestions for creating snippets: If it’s your first time using text expansion snippets, you might be scratching your head a bit. But don’t worry, I’ve already written about the 6 kinds of text expansion snippets everyone should use. It’s a great place to start – your address, email signature and things like that. Most importantly, create a snippet whenever you find that you’re typing in the same thing more than twice in a relatively small time frame.Creating a Snippet
On the application’s homescreen, you’ll see a + button with the New label. Click it and on the right side you’ll be greeted with two empty Abbreviation and Content fields. Type in the keyword in the top field and the content you want it to expand to in the bottom field. And you’re done. No need to save or anything.
Wasn’t that easy?
But opening the app every time, typing in stuff manually doesn’t really sound like we’re saving as much time as we could. It’s possible to speed up the process by creating a snippet from selection or the clipboard. So when you come across a paragraph or some text you want to quickly type in again, just select/copy it, click the aText menu bar button, select Shortcuts -> Make snippet from selection/Make snippet from clipboard.
Now, aText’s New screen will show up, with the content right there. Type in the Abbreviation and you’re done.
aText Preferences Worth Noting
By default, aText doesn’t back up your snippets. But you can enable it by going to Preferences -> Sync. You can either choose iCloud or any folder. I personally went with a Dropbox folder which means it’s accessible from all of my devices.
From the Hotkeys section you can create keyboard shortcuts for quickly creating a snippet from clipboard/selection and most importantly to disable/enable aText on the fly.
Currently, there’s no option to disable aText in a particular app. Create a keyboard shortcut or just click the aText menu bar icon and click Enabled.
Using Macros and Other Pro Features
When you’re creating a new snippet, you’ll see a down-arrow beside the Content button. This is for changing the type of the snippet. By default, it’s plain text – because you’re just expanding text. But it’s possible to run AppleScripts and ShellScripts this way as well.
Perhaps the most important option from the menu is Formatted text. If you played around with the app for a while, you would have noticed that the app doesn’t really take into consideration text formatting and arrangement. Switch to this option and it will.
Also, below the Content area you’ll see options for Insert and Format. aText gives you access to some very basic macros like the date, time, clipboard, image, key bindings and cursor input. So if you want to create your own macro using one of these, this is the place to do it.
From the Format option, you’ll be able to format the text – align it, change the font size and more.
What Did You Automate?
Which time-saving snippet did you create? Share with us in the comments below.
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Did You Know
In 1835, Thomas Davenport developed the first practical EV.