I have some basic text replacements set up on my Mac using the built-in text replacement functionality not something like Text Expander.
I’ve never had an issue with one not working until now. (I guess I’ve never tried this scenario.). I’m in a Google Doc file in Safari and the replacement does not work.
Anyone else have this issue and more importantly, have a fix for it?
Many thanks!
Yes. I actually didn’t even know about that as an option. But I looked at it and it was on.
And as a test, I just did the text replacement in this reply window and it works. But I can’t seem to get it to work in Google Docs or Sheets.
Shucks, a swing and a miss. I just did a quick search and found others with the same problem. I’ve not verified this but it appears that Mac text replacement works in the Safari browser, but not in Google Docs, or any other browser. However, I discovered Docs does have build in Text Replacement.
I rarely use Google Docs, but out of curiousity I just tried Espanso in it and it didn’t work properly either.
Then I tried it in StackEdit and it works just fine there, so the problem isn’t text replacement, Safari, or web apps. It’s Google Docs.
Thanks. Who knew?! It doesn’t seem efficient for me to set up another set of text replacements in Google Docs but perhaps one or two very common ones would be good.
I tried all this and found the inbuilt expansion to be very unreliable on the mac. I purchased Typinator (one-time fee) and now sync my snippets between macOS and iOS once every 6 months (via a script).
I’d suggest you also get a text expansion application. There are many from free ones (like Espanso) to paid ones like Typinator, aText, etc. Some are $10-15 but worth it considering the time/mental energy these text expansion applications save.
Sorry to bring up a dirty word, but when I use Google Docs in CHROME, my Espanso substitutions work just fine.
I know switching browsers is probably not an option, but the issue here isn’t with text expansion, it’s specific to Safari
That’s not how the web is supposed to work.
While that may be true, Safari’s marketshare of browsers is only 9% on desktop, 25% on mobile.
Some website developers don’t give minority browsers the same amount of attention. The same was true when I.E. was number 1.
Safari is my primary browser on Mac and I run Google Workspace in Chrome. But I occasionally have to use Chrome for websites that don’t work properly in Safari.
I give you vision and you give me facts. 
If you have your own platform as Apple has always had and Microsoft (relatively) recently established with their Surface and Xbox line of computers, you can call the shots on it. Does Google have their own platform beyond their weak hold on Android phones and Chromebooks? No, so they have tried to make the web their platform. Call me old-fashioned, but the web, in its best version of itself, was supposed to be a cooperative venture.
True.
Also true.
And today multiple world powers are trying to “encourage” both Apple and Google to more cooperative with their internet neighbors so maybe we are headed in the right direction.
LOL… That is a great line !!
I’m glad you pointed this out, but they probably work fine in any chromium browser. I completely removed Chrome from my MacBook years ago following the instructions on Chrome is Bad, and haven’t missed it once.
I’ve come to believe that the only reason people still use it is habit or because their IT department forces it on them. Every Chrome extension I’ve tried has worked just fine in Vivaldi, Brave, and Arc.
