Here are a couple of reasons why you might want to stick it out with TextExpander. TextExpander has gone full-on Enterprise. TextExpander also added a whole new tier ($9.95/month) for making it easier to store and share snippets between teams.ĭear I love you & have used you since “Textpander”, but there is no way in hell I’m paying $5/month. This is something users could already do using Dropbox previously.
#TYPEIT4ME EXPORT WINDOWS#
With TextExpander 6 for Mac, TextExpander 4 for iOS and surprisingly, a new Windows beta, TextExpander has released its own, secure web service (along with a website) for storing and syncing text snippets. TextExpander now costs $4.95/month (Or $3.96/month if billed annually) and doesn’t add any new superbly useful features to make it worth paying $5 every month. And this is one of those few times when the outrage might not be entirely unwarranted. Whichever text-expansion utility you choose, though, the important thing is that you do choose one: If your work requires intensive typing at all, your hands and wrists will thank you.When Smile announced that their super useful, $45 text expansion utility TextExpander was switching to a subscription model, the internet (or at least my Twitter feed) did not take it well. These features push it slightly ahead of TypeIt4Me, and help justify its higher price tag. The overall win, however (this time at least), goes to TextExpander, because of its support for syncing, creating expansions from selected text, and executing shell scripts in expansions. Both are exceptionally good utilities, and nearly mirror each other feature for feature-you won’t go wrong with either one. Typinator is a solid third place it does many things well, but it lacks some of the advanced features that the others have. It’s text-expansion capabilities, though, are the weakest of the group. Spell Catcher X is an incredibly powerful systemwide spelling checker with a huge collection of dictionaries.
Macworld’s buying adviceĪll four of these programs are good. These capabilities put those two a step beyond the other text-expansion utilities. Only TextExpander and TypeIt4Me enable you to define AppleScripts as snippets only TextExpander lets you use shell scripts, too. All of these utilities except for Spell Catcher let you define where the cursor should be after your snippet is inserted. When you run the expansion, TextExpander pops up a dialog box, where you can fill in the data for each field. TextExpander takes a more structured approach, using field names in your expansion-so you could, for example, easily add a reference to the sales price in more than one spot. TypeIt4Me simply inserts pauses at each spot you indicate you type whatever you want, and then press Tab or Right Arrow to continue to the next insertion spot. (The brackets are just an example each program has its own variable formatting.) When you trigger the expansion, you’ll be prompted to input the bracketed variables. For example, you could create a shortcut named salesreply that expands into something like Thank you for your interest in, which we sell for we currently have available for sale. TextExpander lets you quickly create snippets of HTML coding and other complex text.Both TextExpander and TypeIt4Me enable you to create expansions that pause for user input. You may be able to use Dropbox or another service to sync snippet collections from the others, but doing so isn’t as easy as it is in TextExpander. Typinator’s text-entry box can’t expand, which makes it harder to add snippets.If you use more than one Mac, TextExpander alone has a preference that lets you sync snippets, using MobileMe or Dropbox. TextExpander and Spell Catcher allow you to create a new expansion based on the current selection and TextExpander and TypeIt4Me allow you to do so with items on the clipboard. TextExpander and TypeIt4Me also let you create new shortcuts from within any application, using global hotkeys. Both feature a freely expandable expansions box, which makes it easy to add longer text clippings. TypeIt4Me and TextExpander have the cleanest setup interfaces. All but Spell Catcher support snippets containing rich text and images, as well as plain text.īut before any of these programs will expand anything for you, you have to define some abbreviations and their full-form expansions. Even a more complex (and somewhat unrealistic) test case-pasting 1500 words of text, and inserting a couple of date and time references within it-worked well in all of them. But because they can do much more than that, I consider them a separate category.) The basicsĪll four programs do what they say they can do with basic, plain-text expansions. Among many other things, they can also insert text. (You might also include keyboard macro utilities, such as
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