RIP: TextExpander integration in iOS Apps

I’m so used to having my text expander abbreviations fire without fail, in drafts and omnifocus without first selecting the text expander keyboard. Having to remember to switch to that keyboard before typing the abbreviation is going to be really hard to do.

On the other hand, I hope Smile pays more attention to iOS as a result of their new funding, and because of this development, it looks like that might be the case.

I’ve never been able to get this to work. The Software keyboard does, but not hardware.

The new TE keyboard has been working flawlessly for me so far. Fill-In snippets are working great in DayOne so rapid fire journalling is back.

Yeah, it’s a trade off between universality and fiddling to switch keyboards (and then switch back again).

My main use case was in Drafts - where my “Daily Draft” action, among other things, refreshed snippets (which rarely changed).

But now I think I could define some things for eg OmniFocus, Safari, Tweetbot etc.

EDITED TO ADD: It also strikes me the TE Keyboard had better be an inherently good keyboard - to avoid switching. In early testing of the TestFlight beta it doesn’t seem to offer predictive text suggestions in the way the built in one does.

yep, this was the only issue for me also.

You could have always done that. Omnifocus is one of the few apps that have always had full TE support. :smiley:

@MartinPacker How did you get in the beta? I’d like to try it out too.

Go here and click “Join the TextExpander 7 iOS Beta”

2 Likes

So… if I’m reading this right, snippits won’t work in Ulysses anymore unless I use the textexpander keyboard, which I dislike the look of. If this is the truth, then I guess I really need to finally get rid of TE. I’ve been along for the ride, even with the subscription nonsense, but they’re now ruining my workflows. It’s enough.

I think you need a code or invitation to redeem for the beta.

Are you speaking about the old keyboard or the new one? They are as different as can be. Ulysses never had full TE support anyway and the new keyboard corrects that deficiency.

This is an old post of mine about enabling Text Expander integration in Ulysses. I don’t use either now, so I can’t check if this is still the works.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, but I know that Ulysses had the basic expansion capabilities of TextExpander. When I say “full” support, I mean “fill-in snippets” which imo, is the true power of TE. Apps like Drafts, Omnifocus, Fantastical, and Byword are examples of apps with full TE support. The new keyboard will solve the issue of apps that only “half supported” TE.

As this is one thing, for some unknown reasons, never worked (also not on macOS) for me anyway, I can live with that…

1 Like

agreed. I rarely use that on the apple keyboard

1 Like

Indeed. I used the basics, which were for my journaling habit, the ability to add the current date/time and snippits to handle recurring names and places. I appreciated that I didn’t need to use textexpander’s keyboard because I found it ugly and I didn’t want to see it all the time, as it seems that whatever keyboard you choose follows system-wide and is multiple clicks to change. The Ulysses implementation (same as Day One) allowed me to keep Apple’s keyboard and still use basic text expansion without ever having to think about changing keyboards.

The new TE keyboard actually saved the Day One subscription from getting canceled at the end of this month. I rapid fire journal with fill-in snippets in Day One and since I need to first enter it in Drafts, I was just going to cut Day One loose and store the pages somewhere else. D1 gets one more year.

1 Like