Textexpander Snippets

The saves keystrokes by letting you type a short sequence that’s replaced by a longer one. That’s the heart of the app, which has expanded (sorry) its repertoire of replacement types over time to include form letters with fill-in and drop-down elements, a library of emoji, and a host of placeholders for date, time, the contents of the clipboard, and other elements. The previous updates for OS X and iOS are less than a year old; of TextExpander for OS X last June and our high opinion of the core software remains unchanged. However, the reason for this new review is a significant change in how its maker, Smile, prices its new version, which is coupled with mandatory cloud-based synchronization through its own servers, as well as options to share continuously updated snippets for individual users and groups. With the new ecosystem, the TextExpander apps for OS X and iOS (and a beta for Windows 7 and later) cost nothing but work only when there’s an active monthly or yearly subscription. Further, the company’s website becomes a required hub for all users, whether they sync and share or not.

The web app manages sharing snippets, which are organized by type and use icons to identify additional characteristics, like globally shared. For details about core features in TextExpander, consult.

In this review, I’ll point out changes in the snippet editor, but will be focused on the ecosystem of apps: First, how it all works; next, security decisions and tradeoffs; and finally, how existing users should approach the new arrangement. But I can start with the conclusion: This first iteration is overpriced for most users’ needs, and removing the ability to use TextExpander on a standalone basis with a less efficient personal sync doesn’t give existing customers any advantage. Smile says it plans to add additional features and sophistication, which may ultimately make it worth the price to some users in the future, including those upgrading from the previous standalone releases.

TextExpander Snippets. Collection of my TextExpander snippets used for daily coding and what-not. Snippet Groups Characters. Set of characters or silly emoticons. Inspired from Brett Terpstra's with a few of my own thrown in. Personal favorite being: (╯° °）╯︵ ┻━┻ HTML. Snippets for basic markup. My favorite TextExpander snippets If you asked Macworld editors to name their favorite utilities, many of us would mention TextExpander.If you type for a living, as we do, TextExpander—or a.

But we review the software and service in front of us, not a future version we can’t test. Moving to cloud city The new set of TextExpander apps revolve around and connect to Smile’s servers. You’re required to set up an account and it has to be in good standing—currently paid for and active—to use snippets on any copy of the app you have, as well as to access sharing features on the website.

If you’re logged out or the subscription lapses, snippets disappear. (They can be exported from the OS X version to retain copies.) When your subscription is inactive, TextExpander empties all the snippets. The new app versions comprise TextExpander 6 for OS X, TextExpander 4 for iOS, and TextExpander 1 for Windows (in beta). There’s no purchase cost for the apps. The two subscription levels are labeled Life Hacker (for consumers) at $5 billed monthly or $47.50 per year and Team (for businesses) at $10 billed monthly or $95.50 pear year.

Smile offers a 30-day trial for both flavors of its service. (Owners of previous releases receive a lifetime discount on the Life Hacker tier’s yearly rate.) Both tiers allow something previously unavailable in TextExpander: publishing snippets to others that push out updates whenever the source snippet is changed. Previously, TextExpander required exporting a snippet group (a folder that collects items), sending that or loading it on a shared local or cloud server, and importing it in another copy of the app. (That option remains available.) Further, anyone with permissions to edit a shared snippet can make changes, and those revisions are in turn pushed to everyone that’s part of the shared group.

The Life Hacker flavor lets subscribers share with any other user by email address. The Team version adds administrator-level features for showing group members, managing permissions, automatically pushing groups of snippets to people joining an organization or already part of it and consolidated billing.

TextExpander now includes a Team tier for sharing snippets across an organization, managed via its web app. This new ecosystem adds an ok, but slightly awkward web app to the mix. When logged into an account at Textexpander.com, you have the same access to groups of snippets and individual entries, and can even edit and add snippets using all the tools available in the native apps. (The website is also the only way to edit snippets with the current Windows beta, which lacks a front-end interface, and can only expand snippets defined elsewhere.) Some snippet groups can’t be shared, and the iconography isn’t crystal clear. If you see an icon with a single person that also has an orange plus-sign icon to its right, you can add other users. The Suggested Snippets group, however, can’t be shared, but has the single-person icon.

Groups identified with a globe are set “worldwide” by Smile, such as for emoji. Clicking the plus sign lets you enter email addresses, but not (yet at least) select people with whom you’ve already shared other snippets.

There’s no global or local address book, which reduces utility, though ensures more privacy. You can set permissions for whether newly added people have admin privileges, can edit, or further share the group, or change the permissions at any time as an admin for anyone with whom you’re currently sharing. Teams have more controls, with admins being able to assign snippet groups that are automatically added to new or existing users’ accounts. Team-shared snippets can be shared with guests outside the team, but a snippet group created for a team or moved under team management can’t be converted back to a regular group via the web interface.

Instead, you have to export it and import it back in, then delete the team version. Syncing and sharing are the same thing in this new ecosystem, and in my testing, it worked equally well on my devices with the same account and among devices logged in to different accounts that were sharing snippet groups. The one significant change in the apps, by the way, involves both improvement and omission. A redesigned snippet editor has drop-down menus with all the special features, like inserting time-based placeholders, system keys, fill-in items, and the rest.

This is a far superior interface for both new and experienced users. The editor is identical across the Mac, iOS, and web apps. A refresh snippet editor is the same in Web, iOS, and OS X apps, and is a nice bump up in being explicable to new and veteran users alike.

However, there’s also a step back. TextExpander for OS X used to have a split-pane view that provided a live preview as you assembled a snippet. This preview now requires a keystroke (Command-Return), which produces a modal dialog that has to be dismissed.

In the iOS app, tapping a forward arrow brings up a preview and tapping a back arrow takes one back. The web app lacks a preview entirely. And there’s an odd and unfortunate omission in this first outing related to sharing. You can’t manage shared snippet groups via the native apps. Sharing, adding people, managing permissions, and other tasks can only be done via the web app.

While I expect that will be remedied in future releases of the apps, it makes it feel as if the ecosystem was released too soon. The Windows client is still in beta testing, and didn’t work well for me on an up-to-date Windows 10 laptop; I couldn’t get it to expand with the latest beta release and restarting the laptop. It’s also “headless,” as noted above, and has no snippet-editing or preferences interface. Hidden in plain sight Previously, Smile hasn’t stored any snippet information on servers under its control. Any syncing involved required a third-party service, and snippets were as vulnerable to disclosure as the policies and protections offered by those other firms, like Dropbox and Apple (for iCloud). The iOS app (shown), web app, and OS X app show the same organization by how snippet groups are shared and owned. But sharing is managed exclusively at the Web site.

Now, central storage of snippets is mandatory. The new ecosystem stores everything on Smile’s servers, uses the web app as a view into storage and administration, and treats apps as synchronized end points.

This invites more scrutiny of Smile’s security and encryption. The company’s co-founder, Greg Scown, answered a number of questions via email that weren’t on the firm’s website as I wrote this, but the company plans to provide more detail. Smile that its users shouldn’t put anything that’s generally useful to another party if it were stolen, such as social security numbers and passwords.

That’s impossible to enforce, of course, and snippets used inside a company—even the full set of responses a company uses for customer service—could reveal sensitive information alone or when viewed as a set. All the apps and the website use the most recent secure version of TLS (version 1.2) for encrypted sessions, such as over https. However, the apps and website don’t use certificate pinning, in which the digital certificates used to validate identity are restricted to be accepted only if issued by a small number of outside parties. Pinning prevents subverting operating systems through malware that can install root certificates that would produce valid-looking documents that a pinned app would reject, but a non-pinned one would accept. It’s seen by security experts as a best practice for iOS apps by Apple and for apps in general. Scown says Smile stores snippets at rest in unencrypted form on database servers operated by Compose.io, an IBM company.

The company evaluated using solutions in which data is always encrypted except during the moments items are needed for syncing or updating, and found the other security elements—such as how passwords were restricted—were lacking in its evaluation. There’s a difference between unencrypted and insecure, and it’s not de facto unsafe that Smile has made this choice.

An attacker has to defeat multiple lines of defense to obtain the raw data—like two-factor authentication—and the raw data in snippets isn’t likely to be as valuable (and thus it’s much less likely to be a target) as, say, information stored by a password-syncing company like AgileBits or LastPass. Data encrypted “at rest” is yet another bar an attacker has to pass, but it’s not insuperable, either. However, I believe Smile’s approach is naive given the current security climate. Other firms operating sync, backup, and hosting services that have native and web clients can let subscribers create a private passphrase that’s used for a per-account encryption key so that data is always encrypted in storage. These systems can support various methods to allow shared access to the same resource, as well.

This may seem like overkill and it adds a support burden to Smile (a lost passphrase means snippets would be unavailable unless backed up locally), but with their subscription cost, this seems like a reasonable baseline for which to ask. There are many approaches, and Smile chose none of them. One more issue, highlighted after this review was originally published. The states explicitly, “The Service is not intended for use by users employed by any federal, state or local government.” This is likely intended to reduce liability, but it strikes another sour security note.

When I look at my macOS applications folder, I see two apps that I first purchased. The first was 1Password, and the second was TextPander.

No, that isn’t a typo. TextPander is the original TextExpander. I first heard about TextPander on The Mac Cast many years ago. TextPander was eventually purchased by Smile Software, and TextExpander was born. Back then, TextExpander ran as a System Preference pane item until version 3.0, where it became a regular application.

TextExpander has been running my Mac since almost the beginning. I’ve purchased every version that has come out, and I’m now a subscriber to TextExpander.com. If you aren’t a TextExpander user, hang on tight. I’m going to show you why it’s one of the few apps I cannot go without.

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Why Do You Need This?

With any app, service, or subscription, you always have to ask yourself: “What does it do for me?” TextExpander allows you to insert “snippets” (email addresses, signatures, code, form letters, images, and more) using a simple keyboard shortcut or abbreviations. An example here would be when I type addr, TextExpander inserts my full address. I also have fdate set up to enter today’s date in this format: YYYY-MM-DD.

What else can you do with TextExpander? The possibilities are endless. If you find yourself typing something frequently, that is a prime target for a snippet. David Spark has a great list of ideas as well.

Another of my most frequently used writing snippets is ;mdl. It takes the clipboard (a URL in this case), converts it into a Markdown link, and places the cursor in the title brackets.

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Rather than constantly typing out frequently used phrases, TextExpander allows you to do it quickly and without typos.

Pricing

TextExpander, for most of its life, was an app you paid for up front, per version. As new versions were released, existing customers were given a cheaper upgrade option to sweeten the deal.

In April of 2016, Smile Software switched to a subscription model. TextExpander is now offered as two different subscription plans: Life Hacker and Team. Life Hacker is ideal for individual users, and Team is ideal for, well, teams or groups. You get a break on pricing if you opt to pay annually, and the Team plan is roughly twice the price due to the additional management features available. Both plans include access to the macOS and iOS apps, and you can check out the pricing, feature list, and upgrade options on their Pricing page.

If you absolutely despise subscriptions or work in an environment that doesn’t work well with syncing (like a workplace with strict firewalls), TextExpander still sells TextExpander 5 (the older, stand-alone version) on their website. The iOS version of TextExpander 3 (no subscription required) is also available on The App Store.

Shortly after the TextExpander.com subscription launched, a lot of customers were frustrated. In a world where it seems like everything is a monthly subscription, customers were upset. Smile Software listened, and they made adjustments. Ultimately, it’s up to you to determine if TextExpander is worth the cost, but if you use it smartly, it ends up saving you more money over time.

Upgrade Discount

Existing customers with a TextExpander license can sign up for just $20/per year. This was the initial promotion rate for the first year, and they have made it the permanent rate.

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Non-Subscription Model

The return of non-subscription versions of TextExpander came after the backlash to the switch to the subscription for version 6.0.

We will continue to sell and support TextExpander 5 for OS X and TextExpander 3 + Custom Keyboard for iOS for those who need it. Some of you can only use Dropbox and/or iCloud at work. Some of you cannot or will not purchase subscription software. You’ve told us that it’s important to serve you in this way, and so we shall.

While the transition was messy, the software is worth the $20/year subscription that I use. I see the value in it because it saves me time and reduces the number of typos I make. In the rest of this review, I am going to attempt to convince you of the same.

Use Cases and Tips

Most of the following items are found on the Editing Bar:

Frequently Typed Items

Snippets for frequently typed items is generally what most people think about when they read about TextExpander. This can be items like typing waddr to expand your full work address. Another one I use is nname to type my name.

The possibilities are endless here. It could be code snippets, city name, email templates, books of the Bible, or anything you type more than once. If you find yourself typing something often, TextExpander will save you time.

AutoCorrect

Another frequent use case for me with TextExpander is correcting frequently misspelled or difficult words. There are some public lists you can subscribe to that will automatically add these things to your snippet database (click here to add it to yours). If you write a lot, this is a huge help.

Canned Responses

Do you work in customer support? TextExpander can be a game changer. Instead of copying and pasting content, you can type a few characters and have TextExpander drop in the entire message. You can even customize the message.

Here is an example:

Hi %filltext:name=Customer Name% ,

Thanks for reaching out. Sorry to hear you are having trouble. Can you reboot it? You can also find more information on our website at this address: %clipboard

Bradley

In this example, the URL at the end will be pulled in from my clipboard, and it will also give me a place to type the customer name.

You can also choose to insert options from a pop up window:

Date and Time Snippets

Here is an example of one you might use.

Today’s Day is %B %d, %Y
The Time is %I:%M %p

You can also change it up to this:

Today’s Day is %B %d, %Y
The Time is %I:%M %p
The date tomorrow is %@+1D%B %d, %Y

The bold section adds one day to the current date. This can be changed to whatever you want it to be. Where would you use this? Let’s say you are emailing a customer to let them know their order shipped, and you would like to give them an estimated date of arrival that is three days out. Here’s an example of that snippet:

Your order shipped. It should arrive by %@+3D%B %d, %Y.

Control Cursor Placement

TextExpander can also control where the curser goes after expansion of the snippet. If we go back to my Markdown link template [% ](%clipboard) as an example, the % places my cursor in between the square brackets so I can start typing the link title immediately.

Add a tab or return

You can also add tabs and returns to your snippets. This would be useful in an email application where you want to start in the subject and then tab down to the message.

Shipping Notification for Order %clipboard %key:enter%

Your order has shipped. It should arrive by %@+3D%B %d, %Y. Thank you for your business.

The first section is for the subject, and then the cursor moves to the body to insert the message. All I need to do before using this snippet is copy the order number to my clipboard. (You can also add a tab by using %key:tab%.)

As you can see, TextExpander can do a lot. I can’t imagine using a Mac without it, and I think that you will feel the same way. It’s worth the subscription cost.

Cross-platform

Windows

One of the great things about TextExpander is that it is cross-platform. Do you have a Windows PC at work? You can use all your existing snippets with TextExpander for Windows. Your TextExpander subscription gives you access to all of the apps for no additional cost. It runs on Windows 7,8, and 10.

iOS

There is also an iOS version of TextExpander that is free for TextExpander.com subscribers.

The main area I find useful is the Notes section within the app. This allows you type using the native keyboard, expand your snippets, and then copy them to another app.

TextExpander also has 3rd-party app access using the native keyboard with a few great apps. You can find a list on the Smile Software website. Popular ones include Fantastical, OmniFocus, 1Writer, Drafts, Day One, and Byword.

The app also offers a 3rd-party iOS keyboard, but I don’t love it. This isn’t a knock on the TextExpander keyboard, but no 3rd-party keyboard has been reliable for me because they don’t include access to Siri dictation or autocorrect. Changing keyboards can often be slow as well. With that being said, it does allow you access to your full TextExpander library (this includes all of your subscribed groups) as well as a “Quick Response” section.

Overall, the iOS app is a nice bonus. I don’t find it as essential as the Mac version, but it certainly is handy to have around.

Wait. There’s a Bonus….

Custom Productivity Templates

We have a set of custom productivity templates that work well with the iPad app, GoodNotes. And if you want to try them out, we’ve put together a free guide that can help you.

We’ll show you…

How to create and save custom page templates in GoodNotes.
How to use those page templates to transform GoodNotes into your own productivity notebook (or any other type of notebook replacement).

Plus, we also have included a couple of our custom productivity templates for you to get started with. These templates are right out of our popular productivity course.

Built-in Text Replacement in iOS and macOS

macOS and iOS also offer a similar snippet expansion. On the Mac, this is located in System Preferences under Keyboards → Shortcuts. On iOS, they are located in Settings.app → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement.

In theory, these lists are supposed to sync over iCloud. A running joke among tech pundits is that it’s continually broken, but it’s never high up enough on Apple’s priority list to fix. It’s functional, but it doesn’t offer near the functionality or speed as TextExpander. If you just have 2-3 snippets to expand (such as email addresses), it would probably be fine, but anything past that is going to slow you down.

Alfred Snippets

Alfred, our favorite macOS app launcher, also offers snippet expansion similar to TextExpander and Apple. Alfred’s snippets are comparable in functionality to TextExpander, and certainly more powerful than Apple’s, but we prefer TextExpander because Alfred’s snippets only work on macOS. If having access to your snippets on iOS or Windows is important, Alfred isn’t a viable choice. But, if you only intend to use snippets on your Mac and you’re already an Alfred user, the snippet functionality might be worth a look, even if it isn’t as feature-rich as TextExpander.

Conclusion

TextExpander is one of those apps that I immediately miss when using someone else’s Mac. It stays out of my way, and it doesn’t distract me at all. It makes my life a lot easier, and with the time it saves me, it’s one of the best values in software. Even with the switch to a subscription-based price model, I find it indispensable — it’s that beneficial to me.