I was, at one time, a TextExpander user. Eventually I migrated away, first to Alfred and most recently to Keyboard Maestro.
While these later choices do work well, they are a bit limited in terms of flexibility. Sure, I can put together a macro in KM triggered by a typed text string that can do calculations, pull in the clipboard, etc, it’s more work in general than a dedicated text expansion app.
I just stumbled upon Snippety [https://snippety.app] which looks very nice from their website, but the purchase is through the App Store and I have not found (yet) a way towards a free trial. I have also heard of Expanse [https://espanso.org] which is free/open source, but lacks a GUI and is configured via editing text files (not the worst thing in the world, but probably a steeper learning curve and I may not want to devote that much time).
I know there are other popular choices - aText, Typinator - so I was wondering what others think, and in particular if anyone has tried either Snippity or Expanse and can provide some thoughts.
I use snippity. The biggest reason I ended up choosing it was that it has ios support as well. Espanso is good, but no mobile support. I never could get text expander to work well with mobile, and had been using phrase express (fyi this is free on mobile, and does sync to mac as well).
Overall I have been very happy wtih the snippety program. 1 time paid purchase when I got it, and syncs quickly. Easy to make snippets on ios/ipados/mac. I ultimately do my “templates” all in snippety so I can use them will all apps. Like all text expansion on ios, you do have to switch the keyboard. On mac I find it works well with “dot phrases” where “.today” will for example set to put in todays date, etc.
I’ve fairly recently switch to Espanso, on the basis that it’s cross platform across Windows, macOS and importantly, Linux (as I appear to be moving towards that).
I now have all my text shortcuts across all my desktop devices.
The online guidance is quite good. Where I got stuck, Claude AI managed to help out as well.
I’ve used Expanso, Keyboard Maestro, Rocket Typist, Typinator, and Snippety. All of them are good, but I’ve settled on using both Typinator and Snippety.
I chose Typinator since it has large libraries that can be imported that can auto correct common typos and can perform some very advanced expansions. However it’s Mac only, and I also wanted a place to start building a library of reusable AI prompts. So I recently added Snippety to my toolbox. It works across Mac, iOS and iPadOS with very fast syncing, and lends itself better to code snippets and prompt libraries. It doesn’t have any free trial option so I had initially put off, but it has been worth the purchase.
If I had to choose only one I’d probably go with Snippety. It’s cross platform and has a slightly more friendly UI. It also has support for BYO AI key so you can utilise AI to help generate snippets, as well as to perform actions when expanding snippets.
If you are still looking for a text expansion app since migrating away from TextExpander, you may want to accept that all of the “other” apps, do not measure up. Sure, some can do this or that, but not everything. Not only does TextExpander save me lots of time when I write, it saves me lots of time by my not needing to look for another text expansion app.
I’ve been using TextExpander for several years. The reason I continued to use it was the ability to use iOS keyboard snippets. The $40 yearly cost was the reason I finally switched to Typinator this year ($40 one time price). It works great on Mac and I haven’t noticed anything missing in Typinator compared to TextExpander.
Typinator doesn’t work on iOS but Paste Clipboard Manager does. I have the iOS snippets I need stored in Paste, then use the snippet keyboard.
The only thing I missed from TextExpander is the Pop sound that was made when an expansion was triggered. Thankfully Typinator allows for custom sounds so I recorded the Pop and imported it into Typinator
I’ve done a lap with many of the tools. I tried Espanso and it’s ok. Then I realized Alfred has a good enough set of tools built in.
The key weakness of Alfred for this stuff, it doesn’t support mobile. However, all of the snippet type apps on mobile require switching keyboards. Ugh.
What can TextExpander do that Typinator can’t? Typinator has regular expression snippets, one time purchase, and can sync via iCloud. None of these features exist in TextExpander.
I’ve tried both Typinator and Snippety, but found them less intuitive than TextExpander when it comes to creating snippets with multiple fields and form elements. Another dealbreaker for me: I rely heavily on app-specific snippet groups, and I couldn’t figure out how to limit certain snippet groups to particular apps in Typinator the way I do in TextExpander.
(Full disclosure: my employer covers my TextExpander subscription, so cost isn’t a factor for me.)
I do like Alfred’s snippet implementation, but it’s somewhat limited when you need advanced variables or form fields within snippets.
Based on the range of preferences in this thread, it seems like text expansion tools are highly personal choices!
Sync my snippet database between my Macs, iPad and iPhone. Also works in Windows, or on any computer with a web browser for that matter. Superior fill-in snippets. You can google the rest.
