How many Snippets in TextExpander or Typinator

I am trying to replace an old custom web app which lets me reply to technical questions by selecting from a menu of about 1,000 answers which I periodically edit.

Currently this web app has a MySQL backend for the library of snippet answers (each of which can be from 1 paragraph to 1 page in length).

It has dawned on me that I may not need custom software for this; TextExpander would be fine using its Inline Search capability and I presume (hope) there is a similar feature in Typinator.

Question - what is the practical performance limit for either of these? Has anyone worked with 1,000 or more snippets which may be a few paragraphs each?

  1. There is a quick search in Typinator.

  2. As for the “how many snippets can it work with?” question, I can only suggest that you contact them directly at typinator@ergonis.com to get an official answer. But if I were a betting man, I bet that you would be fine. Text is small and computers are powerful.

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I have about 3,000 abbreviations (snippets) in Typinator – 2/3 of which are built-on abbreviations provided by the developer for spelling auto-correction and inserting emoji into text. So, if Ergonis provides big data sets for its app that you can too. If I recall correctly, there were also big sets like that available for TextExpander when I used that app.

The main thing with any set of abbreviations is a scheme to remember them, and avoiding conflicts with other abbreviations that the app knows about.

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This is an official reply from Ergonis Software, the creators of Typinator.

For Typinator, 1000 snippets is almost nothing. We have a few predefined sets (typically auto-corrections) with more than 2000 items each. We also have a special set with German ZIP codes, which contains more than 50,000 items. You can install multiple such sets without any problems. We even have customers with 500,000+ items (for example, product codes and description). No, this is not a typo: This really is “more than half a million”. Typinator handles that many snippets with ease. Typinator uses sophisticated techniques to quickly identify abbreviations as you type along. Typically, this takes not more than a few microseconds per keystroke, no matter how many snippets you have.

As far as the size of the snippets is concerned: Typinator does not care whether a snippet contains is a single word, a line, a paragraph or a chapter of a book. As long as your computer has enough storage capacity to store your snippets, Typinator can handle them all.

And, yes, Typinator has a “Quick Search” feature for quickly finding snippets by keywords in the abbreviation and/or snippet. Set up a hotkey for invoking the Quick Search, then type one or two words to find the desired items. In this way, you do not even need to remember abbreviations for all your snippets. Just search for certain words in your snippets.

If you have further questions, feel free to contact us directly by e-mail via the addresses you can find in the support area of our web site.

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Thank you - much appreciated. I’m well under half a million so sounds like no issue!

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Thanks so much for creating an account to answer this question.

One of the reasons I’m happy to have moved from TextExpander to Typinator.

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