Migrate Typinator Snippet to Keyboard Maestro

[andy4222]

Hey everyone, is there a way I can migrate all the Typinator snippets that I have to my Keyboard Maestro?

I exported Typinator snippets to CSV format

<abbrevation>,<expansion>
im,I'm

I can write a Python script to translate this, but how do I create all these macros inside Keyboard Maestro through code or automation? Is there a list of macro files that I can generate, and when I open them they automatically create these text expansions for me in Keyboard Maestro? I have around two thousand snippets, so I can't manually create them in Keyboard Maestro.

I did a similar thing when I migrated Alfred Snippets to Typinator. But now, after years of using Typinator, I feel the need to do much more things, and I don't find Typinator powerful enough. Keyboard Master provides me a lot of those features out of the box.

[peternlewis]

See:

Create Text Expansions Macro

Here is a macro that lets you create simple text expansion macros. Simply fill in the text of the action with lines like: trigger:text where trigger is the Typed String trigger you want and text is the text you want to expand to. Then select all the actions and click the Try button at the bottom to run them once and it will create a macro for each expansion. There is no trigger on the macro since its not going to be a macro you want to run except occasionally. Note that to create a new exp…

It should not be hard to mash what you have into a format that can be used by that macro (or adjust that macro to work with what you have).

[kevinb]

@andy4222

I have around two thousand snippets

2,000 snippets would swell Keyboard Maestro’s .plist file somewhat. I understand that that is something that is better avoided. Might 2,000 snippets cause problems, @peternlewis?

In a reply to my post “Suggestion: be more positive about text expansion in KM ”, @mrpasini points out that his macro Brevis is one alternative.

FWIW: I am gradually moving back to Espanso from Typinator, but retaining expansions in KM (and probably Typinator) for some advanced uses.

[Edited 2025-12-26 to make the last sentence clearer].

[mrpasini]

@kevinb

2,000 snippets would swell Keyboard Maestro’s .plist file somewhat.

That was one of my concerns addressed by Brevis, which stores them all in a variable outside the plist file.

I just store 70 or so in there, though. Two thousand is another matter.

[Nige_S]

@kevinb

2,000 snippets would swell Keyboard Maestro’s .plist file somewhat. I understand that that is something that is better avoided. Might 2,000 snippets cause problems, @peternlewis?

These would (probably -- stranger things have happened!) be 2,000 relatively short plist entries though, not 2,000 macros with multiple embedded images for detection and nested actions up the wazoo.

So the size of the plist wouldn't grow excessively, and it's size that is the main cause of slowdowns and other problems.

@andy4222

But now, after years of using Typinator, I feel the need to do much more things, and I don't find Typinator powerful enough.

What's stopping you from using Typinator for your text expansions and KM for your "more powerful" macros? You may have your reasons -- but I'm hoping to dissuade you from a "one tool to do it all" approach, which is rarely as good as using the right tool for a particular job.

[kevinb]

@mrpasini

That was one of my concerns addressed by Brevis, which stores them all in a variable outside the plist file.

Thanks for stating that key point, which I had failed to mention.

@Nige_S

What's stopping you from using Typinator for your text expansions and KM for your "more powerful" macros? You may have your reasons -- but I'm hoping to dissuade you from a "one tool to do it all" approach, which is rarely as good as using the right tool for a particular job.

I would just add to that a reminder that the user interface can be an important part of choosing the “right tool”, and that tastes and needs in that area can vary a lot between users. Thankfully, the range of text expander options gives us quite a lot of choice!

[Frankb]

@kevinb You have 2000 snippets?

Do you mean something like tyvm --> thank you very much? I mean, are they all text expansions? Or do you use this to trigger other things as well? And how can you remember everything? Sorry, lots of questions, but I'm really interested.

[kevinb]

@Frankb

@kevinb You have 2000 snippets?

No; see the post that I quoted.

[Nige_S]

@Frankb

@kevinb You have 2000 snippets?

IIRC, @ccstone once posted here about having 50,000 snippets in Typinator, though the majority were autocorrects.

[peternlewis]

@kevinb

2,000 snippets would swell Keyboard Maestro’s .plist file somewhat. I understand that that is something that is better avoided. Might 2,000 snippets cause problems, @peternlewis?

From the Keyboard Maestro Engine point of view, there is no practical limit of snippets. You could likely have hundreds of thousands of them without issue.

The issue is that Keyboard Maestro is a general purpose tool and so your snippet, done as a macro, takes up significantly most disk space than the dozen of so characters that constitute the trigger and the text and this bloats the Keyboard Maestro Macros.plist file, which is saved (and read) in whole every time you make a change to any of your macros.

If a snippet is done as a simple macro, then a quick test indicates it adds about 270 bytes to the size of the Keyboard Maestro Macros.plist. So 2000 snippets would be around 500k, which is likely not enough to be problematic (assuming an SSD disk).