

The best way to get the most mileage out of TextExpander is to populate your snippet library slowly over time. But let’s dive into the snippets, because that’s what you came for right? TextExpander Snippets for Every Day Use The other prefixes will make more sense as you see them below. To me they just make sense (I used to be a programmer, maybe that explains it). Just because I like to use prefixes does not mean that you have to do it too. So for the previous example of “sig” I would use something like “ si” or “ sig”. This makes it easy for me to memorize snippets, but your mileage may vary. I like to use prefixes, meaning I use special characters at the beginning of my abbreviations. Prefixesīefore I introduce any snippets, I want to show you how I use it which is a little different than how most people use it. Now that you have setup your first snippet, type “sig” (without the quotes) and you should see now that it works. These will be explored later in the article. I always keep the default option of case sensitive. This is the actual abbreviation you will use for typing.This not the actually abbreviation used for typing, but to make it easy for you to know what the snippet does. The label is the handle you want to give to your snippet.This is the body where you will put the snippet in.You can set different types of snippets but for most cases you will use the plain text option.Notice the numbering in orange and arrows in red. The following screenshot explains how snippets work. Next press the “new snippet” icon to create a new snippet. First, select the folder you want to save your snippet in. Not that it is my signature, but this is just for illustration purposes. It’s going to be a very simple one: whenever you type “sig” it will substitute it for “-Thanh of Asian Efficiency”. Now that you’re setup, let’s create your first snippet. Once you have 25+ snippets, it will be a blessing to have them organized nicely into groups. You will thank me later for setting these up. They will make more sense as you create more snippets and when I show you a couple that I use.
#Auto text expander new code#

Setting a shortcut for TextExpander is really useful. The default settings will be fine for most people, but here are screenshots of some my settings that are relevant: Some of my general settings for TextExpander. The first thing you want to do is configuring it properly. Let’s assume you just installed TextExpander.
#Auto text expander new trial#
I highly recommend you try the trial of TextExpander and play around with it.
#Auto text expander new software#
In this article I’m going to use TextExpander by Smile Software, a popular text expansion software for the Mac, to show you how it can make you more efficient. Previously we have covered keyboard shortcuts that can make you more efficient and there was a hint at the end of using text expansion software. The predefined text that will be used for substitution, or snippets as they are called in TextExpander, will save you hours of typing every week. You can customize your own abbreviations so that you can type faster by using less keystrokes. For example, instead of typing “I hope to hear from you soon!” you could type “ihope” which TextExpander can automatically replace with the former sentence. In short, text expansion software, such as TextExpander, allows you to type shortcuts or abbreviations and the software will substitute that with the desired text. In this article we will show you how text expansion can make you more effective. Likewise, most knowledge workers spend a lot of time behind a keyboard, so they might as well be well-versed at using it.

If you spend a lot of time reading books, you might as well learn speed reading. We are of the notion that if you do spend a lot of your time on a particular activity, you should explore options on being more efficient at it. As an Asian Efficiency reader you are mostly likely someone who spends a lot of time behind a computer keyboard.
