Updated TextExpander makes typing on the Mac even faster

TextExpander is one of the most useful tools available for the Mac. It allows you to generate a list of text abbreviations which, when typed, automatically expand into words, phrases, paragraphs or whole pages of text. The upgrade released this week adds significant new capabilities, although some of the new features are still unreliable.

TextExpander runs in the background, and watches your keyboard. To use it, just type.

The best way to describe how TextExpander works is to describe how I use it. When I type the abbreviation "mmw," TextExpander types out my name. I use that as a short e-mail signature. "cwsig" is the signature I use for correspondence relating to this blog. I have a couple of other e-mail signatures I use for various other roles I play, all accessible by typing abbreviations I created and customized with TextExpander.

TextExpander isn't just for e-mail signatures. If I type "hhipaa" it spells out "Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)." And "palblogtag" spells out the last paragraph I use on every single blog I post to a particular corporate Web site.

I also use TextExpander to type out HTML. "hhref" types out the code for embedding a link on a Web page. When I type that abbreviation, TextExpander automatically puts the contents of the Mac clipboard in the right place for the URL, and it positions the cursor in the right place for me to type the link text.

You can use TextExpander to lay down styled text, and even include images. If you want your e-mail signature to appear in Helvetica font with your corporate logo, TextExpander will do that.

Creating a new text snippet is easy. TextExpander installs an icon in your Mac menu bar; click on that and you get a dropdown menu that gives you the options of creating a new text snippet using either the current selection or contents of the clipboard.

That calls up a window with a form containing the text you chose as the expansion, along with a space where you can type in the abbreviation that will be used to expand the text. In the first example above, the abbreviation "mmw" expands into "Mitch Wagner."

TextExpander vendor SmileOnMyMac produced a new version Wednesday. The biggest change to Version 3.0 is that it's now much easier to add and change snippets, using keyboard shortcuts.

You can also set up a keyboard shortcut to prompt TextExpander to suggest an expansion based on what you've previously typed. For example, if I type "mm," then the keyboard shortcut for suggesting an expansion, TextExpander suggests "mmw," plus several other expansions containing two Ms in a row. (This is all easier to figure out than it is to describe; download it and play with it for yourself.)

The menu bar now has a search field, which lets you locate snippets for which you forgot the abbreviation.

A new command, also accessible by a keyboard shortcut, allows you to edit the last expanded snippet -- if you notice a typo in your e-mail signature, you can fix it in TextExpander right away. I used that command to clean up a couple of snippets that have been annoying me for months. They were wrong, but not wrong enough for me to dig through TextExpander to find them and correct them; it seemed easier to just correct them in place every time I used them.

Keyboard shortcuts are customizable.

TextExpander supports fill-in-the-blank snippets. You might use this feature to personalize boilerplate e-mail replies, for example. I found it unreliable, hopefully the bugs will be worked out soon.

The new version supports synchronization with Dropbox , along with continued support for MobileMe. It also supports automatically capitalizing the beginning of sentences, and correcting double-caps at the beginning of sentences. i found those features uneven. As you can see, it's not working so well in this paragraph. i double-capped the word "As" in the beginning of the previous sentence, which TextExpander corrected. but TextExpander hasn't correctly capitalized the beginnings of other sentences in this paragraph.

The biggest change to Version 3.0 is under the hood. TextExpander now runs as an application, rather than a preference pane. That change enabled many of the interface changes we see in TextExpander. It will also make updates simpler for both the developer and the user; I don't use a lot of Preference Pane apps, and so whenever TextExpander used to ask me to update, I'd have to pause and think through how to update a Preference Pane app. Updating other applications on the Mac are dead simple, I can do it automatically. (Updating Preference Pane apps are dead simple too, but I don't do it very often, and so I have to stop and remember how it's done, every time.)

TextExpander is priced at $35, with an upgrade price of $15. Upgrades are free to users who purchased after Nov. 1. I gladly paid my $15 to update yesterday.