It's a funny world where most Mac users have heard of
TextExpander by Smile Software, but so many of us don't even know that OS X has much of the same functionality built in for free. Strictly speaking, it is identical: your Mac can let you type a few characters, and it will expand that out into whole sentences, phone numbers you keep repeating, words you always find difficult to spell, and more -- assuming you've done some pre-configuration.
In practice, there is a world of difference -- and if we've raved about TextExpander before, we only like it even more now. OS X calls its version Shortcuts, and it's very limited. It won't expand out entire paragraphs, it won't automatically insert today's date where you want that. It won't ask you questions and then use your answers in the expanded text. For all of that, you do need TextExpander -- and
we recommend it.
However, what OS X does, it does nicely and handily. Plus, the little expanding shortcuts you create on OS X automatically go over to iOS and vice versa.
So here's what you can do, here's how to do it, and also here is where to set it all up. We did this in OS X Yosemite and iOS 8, but the core functions have been hidden away within both for a long time.
First, OS X
On your Mac, go to System Preferences, choose Keyboard and then click on Text. You're interested only in the Replace and With panels, which may have come with some examples or may be bare.
We're going to steal a TextExpander term here and call everything in the Replace column a "trigger." When you type something in that list, it triggers your Mac into action. The With column contains the actions.
Write your text
Click on the plus sign on the bottom left. Now type a trigger, and either tab or click over to the With column and type what you want that trigger to become. It's important that you make the trigger something that is memorable but also something that you will never actually type without meaning to unleash the action -- so no using "addr" as the trigger for your address, unless you want that to happen every single time you type any word that starts with or contains "addr."
It's also important that you get the expanded text right. Say you have trouble spelling the word Beiderbecke: you could write a trigger like, say, 'xjazz' if you remember that Bix Beiderbecke was a jazzman. If you then mis-spell Beiderbecke in the With column, that mis-spelling will be what appears every time you type xjazz.
Use your triggers
You can use what you've created here in any application on your Mac. Wherever you can type, you can type a trigger.
Wherever you do it, as you start to type your trigger, OS X will offer to autocomplete those few characters. However, if you carry on typing to the end of that short trigger, OS X now offers the complete expanded sentence. It does this in exactly the way that it offers corrected spelling suggestions, and you use it exactly the same way. Press the space bar, and OS X enters your full text. Press the escape key or type any other letter to continue writing and OS X takes the suggestion away.
Next, iOS
It's exactly the same process except here you go to Settings, then choose General, Keyboard and lastly Shortcuts. It's so very much the same process that that would be that, except there are subtle differences.
One is just how the triggers are displayed in that Shortcut settings: for some reason, they are occasionally broken in to two lines. But as you create them by pressing the + at top right, you see the correct one line for trigger and one line for the replacement With text.
One gotcha
Just be aware of this. When you're in a new message on OS X Mail, and are using a trigger as you type in the address field, you can press tab or return. Whichever you press, Mail expands out that text correctly. If you do the same thing on iOS, though, be certain to press return.
Mail on iOS thinks a tab is part of a new email address, and you end up getting errors as it says you've got invalid addresses.
Do us a favor, and don't be a meathead
Just for us, please vow that you will never use this for passwords. You can, of course, and doubtlessly it's easier to type "xpassword" than it is "*&&kk11230%%meh," but if someone gets your phone, they have that password in plain sight in your keyboard shortcut settings. You're not using this password for everything you sign into, right? We didn't think so.
-- William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)
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