Text Expansion: Share your tricks/tips

Software
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Hi MPUers,

Hope you are doing great! I just started using a dedicated text expansion app (Typinator) based on strong recommendation from forum members and I’m eager to learn from your experiences.

If you use TextExpander, Typinator, Alfred, Espanso, or any other text expansion app, please share your favorite tricks/tips and how you use them so we all can learn from each other.

:heart:

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@ve for my personal (Vincent’s) email address. Various other combinations of @ followed by two letters for email addresses I often use.

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A few simple ones off the top of my head (I’m on my iPad right now):

  • ;date to get a written-out date (June 11, 2023);
  • ;ds to get a date stamp (2023-06-11);
  • ;ifq to get “If you have any questions, please let me know.” (I found I was using that at the end of many email messages.)
  • ;address to write out my complete mailing address
  • ;street to write out just my house number and street (and I then have similar snippets for my town — good for filling in web forms where auto fill doesn’t work)
  • a snippet for each email address I use
  • ;new - a snippet to create a form/checklist when I get a new call at work, with the headings for what I want to cover.
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I don’t use any of those apps, but on iOS where typing an e-mail address correctly can be a pain I have iOS’s text replacement set to offer my full e-mail address whenever I type @@.

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Nice list @Evan
I also like to start my triggers with a semicolon – I find I get fewer errors and few misfires.

I’m going to add your ;ifq to my battery.

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Have you considered using Snippety? I’ve been using it since it’s early stages and it is indeed great and free.

Basically other than just expanding snippets, you can also pass values to placeholders that your expanded text might include. I’m not sure if any other text expanders do have a similar feature but it works really well in snippety.

So for example lets say your expanded text would be:

Dear {{name}},

Please find attached your monthly {{reportType}} report

Kind Regards,
X

Now let’s say your keyword for this is emailReport

emailReport<John Doe<sales

PS. I’m not affiliated with the app or the developer behind it, I’m just so surprised it’s not getting much traction.

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I’ve used most of the options mentioned, and they more or less all do the same thing.

As a tip I can only say that the most reliable cross device expansion options seems to be the Apple OS itself.

So for simpler expansion options (dates/email addresses/ip addresses etc) I simply use the OS expansion option. Easy and fast on all devices

F.e a default expansion for me is “xg” expanding to “!g” whenever I type it. This means no matter what device I’m on the browser will always use DuckDuckGo’s Google search bang (!g) to search for items in exactly the same way. It’s muscle memory now.

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I use the usual but this is my money one.

.ad

stands for all done, which expands into an email reply at least 10 times a day (its only me but it sounds efficient)

Hi

That should all now be OK.

Please check, if there are any problems please let me know.

Meanwhile thank you for using our help desk, I hope we managed to give you top service, if you have any feedback we would be pleased to receive it.

Completed 11 Jun 2023 at 7:56 PM

I moved all my text snippets to Raycast on the Mac, plus the one above I have saved in Apple for iOS (without the completion date)

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I can’t remember all the snippets unless I introduce them one by one and that is not what I needed. So I use the text expansion facility on Keyboard Maestro and access them through a conflict palette. It is surprising how fast that is. As fast as any of the tricks I have seen or ‘search’ functions on the standard apps. I bear in mind the developer says at large numbers of Keyboard Maestro expansions it takes more computing power than the dedicated apps. However I have never had any issues, then I have less than a hundred expansions.

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Conflict palettes are great for macros, too. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I use them for everything really. The issue for me was remembering the hot keys and snippets and when I started I had too many to learn one by one as it were. I even had hot keys which were really useful that I had made that I had totally forgotten about and I was doing every day a sequence of clicks and so on several times.

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Function: replace a double space with a single space (while typing) after any of the specified characters.

Abbreviation: ([\w.,?;:)>"'!%])˽˽+
Replacement: $1

Function: superscript degree symbol when typing temperatures (e.g., 28°C—which is what it is here in London at the moment!)

Abbreviation: (\d{2})(F|C)
Replacement: $1°$2

Function: Space and punctuate pm and am immediately following time digit (e.g., 5.30pm to 5.30 p.m.)

Abbreviation: (\d)(a|p)(m)
Replacement: $1$2.$3

I have others but that will do for now. Typinator is invaluable.

Stephen

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I use TextExpander for dates, email addresses, email templates and signatures, street addresses I often need and can’t ever remember, the framework I use for my podcast episodes and show notes, my tax ID (again, often needed, can’t remember it), my library card number, and many, many help desk responses.

Oh, and for useful HTML snippets, too, such as centering a graphic or adding a link.

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Brevis – Automating Text Expansions is a Keyboard Maestro macro that consolidates text expansion macros into just one macro, saving space in the Keyboard Maestro plist. In addition to several string triggers, it also provides a handy Control Panel for deploying them.

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