Typinator 7 Update

Hey @Mark,

If you're just a casual user of snippets then there is little benefit to using a dedicated snippet manager – Keyboard Maestro is no slouch...

However. Typinator eats Keyboard Maestro's lunch in both snippet usage and management – so – if you're a really heavy user of snippets (as I am) it's a no-brainer to have a dedicated utility fine-tuned for the job. (I currently have about 50,000 snippets, although many of those are spelling corrections).

Advantages of Typinator:

  • Easy to learn UI.
  • Keyboard shortcuts for adding new snippets.
  • Quick Search pick list for snippets with global and set-specific filtering (sold me after 10 minutes use).
  • The app is AppleScriptable.
  • Support for AppleScript and other scripting languages that run and produce a result in snippets.
  • Compliments Keyboard Maestro – as KM cannot use text insertion macros when its own user-entry dialogs are running.
  • Fillable forms – again compliments Keyboard Maestro.
  • HTML expansions that allow sophisticated templates for rich-text capable email clients like Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Airmail, Thunderbird...
  • Regular Expression triggers.
  • Auto-Correction.
  • Many pre-defined packaged sets for the user to choose from.
  • I've only covered the tip of the iceberg...

As of today I have 75 different sets of snippets in Typinator.

I've been using snippet-expansion utilities since TypeIt4Me came out in 1990. It went through a fallow period several years ago, and I used TextExpander for a while. TextExpander was too buggy, had a poor search (at the time), and I had several bad experiences when communicating with its developers.

One day I was fussing about having too many snippets to remember, and I discovered Typinator with its excellent Quick Search. After 10 minutes usage I bought a copy and have been a pretty happy user ever since. The developers are quite responsive and have implemented a number of my ideas and requests over the last seven or eight years.

I would feel almost as lost without Typinator as I would without Keyboard Maestro (almost).

But as I mentioned – I'm a heavy snippet-user.

There's a demo.

The website covers much more of Typinator's functionality than I have above.

-Chris


EDIT: Typinator is up to version 8.9 as of 2021/09/09 20:30 CDT  -ccs


Jan 27, 2023 – More write-up on Typinator by -ccs


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