That’s where text expansion utilities shine. The interface for creating new substitutions is cramped and hard to work with, you can’t configure the trigger characters that cause abbreviations to expand, and you can’t include text with styles, variable text like the date, or even graphics. With such a useful feature built into macOS and iOS, why would you want to spend money on a third-party utility, like TextExpander (Mac and iOS), Typinator (Mac), or TypeIt4Me (Mac)? Unfortunately, macOS’s text expansion feature doesn’t work in all apps (it likely won’t work if the app lacks the Edit > Substitutions > Text Replacement menu command). It might seem like a good idea to use mm for “Martin Marietta,” but that will get in the way of talking about 35mm film.) (Another tip: don’t create abbreviations that you’ll also want to type normally.
So, you can type omw and tap the Space bar to get “On my way!” typed out for you, regardless of what device you’re using.
#Typinator iphone mac
If you’re signed into the same iCloud account on both your Mac and your iPhone, for instance, the text expansions sync between them automatically. (Tip: If text expansion doesn’t work in a Mac app like Mail or Safari, make sure Edit > Substitutions > Text Replacement is selected.) For both, you can enter a phrase and a shortcut that expands into that phrase when typed and followed by a space or punctuation character.
But we haven’t improved as typists, nor do we enjoy typing more-if anything, we increasingly abbreviate to avoid typing, hence “CUL8R.” Text messaging aside, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to type less without compromising meaning or making your text look like it was composed by a teenager? Thanks to text expansion features built into the Mac and iOS, and extended with third-party utilities, you can.įor basic text expansion capabilities on the Mac, look in System Preferences > Keyboard > Text, and in iOS, go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement. With all the advances in computing and communications, it’s amazing that-after nearly 150 years!-we still use the keyboard layout from the world’s first practical typewriter for entering text into our computers, smartphones, and tablets.