Text expansion

[Joonikko]

Text expansion

 

 

Q & A

What is text expansion?

Text expansion is a way to improve your overall productivity on a computer by having abbreviations replaced with text.

 

Common usecases:

- insert the ending of an email

- insert web addresses

- signatures

- contact info

- other frequently used bits of text

- code snippets & terminal commands

- fix common typos

- capitalize new sentences

- special charachters

- date and time

 

Examples:

@g = @gmail.com

@o = @outlook.com

@h = @hotmail.com

;ltt = http://www.linustechtips.com/main [Enter]

;sig = Best regards, [name], [date]

;fd = Forums are down. Check what's wrong. [Enter]

;fire = Slick, you're fired. [Enter]

 

You can determine in which application each abbreviation works. For example, you can have email addresses only working in your email client, but not in browser thus making it possible to still use Twitter without having to close the application every time you want to reply to someone.

 

Text expansion software

OS X

- Dash

- aText (5$, free 14-day trial)

- TextExpander (34,95$, free trial)

- FastFox Typing expander (29,99$, free trial)

 

Linux

- AutoKey (free)

 

Windows

- AutoHotkey (free)

- PhraseExpress (free for personal use)

- Texter (free)

- Beevy (34,95$, free 30-day trial)

- TextExpander (34,95$, free trial)

- FastFox Typing expander (29,99$, free trial)

 

 

 

 

 

My personal opinion

I use OS X for all of my work and school stuff, so I've settled on aText since it provides all of the features I need in a clean non-cluttered way and works. Features like syncing abbreviations via Dropbox, automatic backups, abbreviations with a pop-up form to fill out etc. are nice and considering how much time it has saved me, it's easily worth the 5 dollars.

 

Screenshot of aText:

 

 

Thanks for reading and I hope you liked my small tutorial / introduction to text expansion.

- Joonikko

[Hyydrah]

It looks really useful, thanks for the post. Maybe we could see this as a feature in the forums?

[Guest]

Didn't realise there were specific programs for this for PC's but a bit of a sidetrack: iOS keyboard shortcuts can save you a lot of time if you do a similar thing. 

[Joonikko]

Those look really neat except I fear that they would take too long to set up all the shortcuts that I would actually want and therefore just get bored and uninstall them.

 

Plus I enjoy typing, may seem weird but I guess just personal preference.

It really didn't take too long for me to set up all the shortcuts I wanted / needed. I also have a hotkey set up to bring up the aText window so I can quickly add the shortcut I need.

I too, enjoy typing (Cherry MX Blues <3), but typing something repeatedly gets boring and thus something like aText saves a lot of time and effort.

[Calavera]

Kind of makes you lazy... besides - the amount of time it takes to think about what abbreviation I should use I could just type it fully... only takes half a second anyway.

And what would I do with all that free time I just created... I can barely keep myself busy already :P