Text Expandre For Mac

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Strangely, Mac OS X has a wide variety of great text expansion apps and everyone does the job well. That said, aText is our favorite thanks to its comprehensive feature set, great performance, and reasonable price.

Mac

FastFox Text Expander for Mac OS X is used to insert your most commonly used text quickly and easily. Use FastFox to expand phrases, paragraphs, documents, images, and many more. Store frequently used text and improve speed and productivity. FastFox Text Expander for Mac OS X is used to insert your most commonly used text quickly and easily. Use FastFox to expand phrases, paragraphs, documents, images, and many more. Store frequently used text and improve speed and productivity.

aText

Platform: Mac OS X
Price: $5
Download Page (Mac App Store)

Features

  • Type a short snippet that can expand to styled or unstyled text of virtually any length (and include pictures)
  • Insert several types of variables into snippets, including date, time, other snippets, the clipboard, and more
  • Create snippets that receive input from fillable forms
  • Create snippet groups that respond to input in different ways
  • Specify special behaviors for specific applications
  • Easily back up your snippets to any folder
  • Expand by typing or by choosing a snippet from the menu
  • Invoke AppleScripts and shell scripts
  • Reposition the cursor in a snippet so you're typing where you want to post-expansion
  • Emulates key presses (e.g. tab, backspace, etc.)
  • Import data from TextExpander, TypeIt4Me, and Automaton Typer

Where It Excels

Despite the very low price for aText ($5), it's remarkably comprehensive. It offers mostly the same feature set as bigger apps like TextExpander for a fraction of the cost. Text expansion works as expected, you can specify when specific groups of snippets should expand, and you have the ability to include so many variables that one little snippet could, potentially, create a unique letter or document. If you use another text expansion app, there's a good chance aText imports its data. It doesn't cost much, it does practically everything, it's simple to use, and it's easy to switch from other popular solutions if you're interested.

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Where It Falls Short

Free Text Expander For Mac

While aText isn't short on features, one notable omission is the ability to sync snippets. While you can specify a backup folder, to which aText saves a backup of your snippets at a specified interval, you can't choose where it actually saves the original copy. This means you can't sync with services like Dropbox or Google Drive, making aText a somewhat less-desirable choice for those with multiple computers. Personally, I use it with two machines but find it a bit of a hassle to manually make the updates. That said, it's a small price to pay when you're already getting so much for such a small price. Additionally, Tran (the developer) tells me that syncing support is a forthcoming feature so it shouldn't be long until this isn't an issue at all.UPDATE: aText received an update that now allows syncing via any folder syncing service like Dropbox or Google Drive.

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The Competition

TypeIt4Me ($5) was our former top pick. It packs quite a punch for $5, too, but doesn't offer as many variable options (like fillable forms) as aText. It does offer a number of unique features like autocorrect, however, so it's worth a look if you want something a little different from most of the competition at a very low price.

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Text Expander ($35) offers a few more features than aText, and a mobile app that's crippled by iOS' rules and restrictions. While TextExpander is a fantastic alternative—and, in some ways, better—it's not a better value than aText. You'll pay seven times more for a very similar experience.

Typinator (24.99€) offers a similar feature set to the other text expansion apps but its price has only gone up. While it is, at the moment, slightly cheaper than TextExpander it doesn't work quite as well. When filling out custom form variables, for example, if the form window loses focus (i.e. you click outside of it) it just disappears. I contacted the developer about this issue and was told it's impossible to fix. TextExpander doesn't have this problem, and when I found the same issue in aText its developer fixed it in less than 24 hours.

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DashExpander (Free, $3 Premium) has an unusual interface and can be a little weird to use at first, but is nonetheless a solid text expansion app. It's also your only free option, so if you don't want to pay anything at all it's the only way to go. While we still really like it, when our first and second choices only cost $5 we highly recommend supporting these developers by paying such a small fee for their excellent work.

Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.

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Instant Word Expansion, Keyboard Shortcuts & Macro Software


Create Custom Shortcuts

To add a new text shortcut in FastFox, enter both the shortcut keys and the text the shortcut will expand to.

Use Your Shortcut

With FastFox running, simply type your shortcut and it will automatically expand to your saved text.

Works in Any Program

Since FastFox runs in the background, shortcuts can be used in any program including word processors and email.
FastFox is a text expander software used to insert your most commonly used text quickly and easily. Expand phrases, paragraphs, documents, images, and more.
  • Store frequently used text
  • Avoid typing things over and over
  • Improves typing speed and productivity
Download FastFox Text Expander for Windows

Text expander software is ideal for anyone who types the same text repeatedly, improving typing speed and productivity by providing easy access to regularly used text using abbreviations or other text shortcuts.

Download the free trial today. Once you get started using FastFox typing expander to speed up your typing, you'll wonder what you ever did without it.

Typical Applications
  • Common responses to email/customer inquiries
  • Store long or difficult medical and legal phrases
  • Reduce transcription time by an average of 30%
  • Multiple rich text email signatures
  • Abbreviation expander
Text Expansion and Image Insertion
  • Expand keyboard shortcuts into words or phrases
  • Create an unlimited number of text shortcuts
  • No limit on expanded text length
  • Save plain text or formatted rich text expansions
  • Create a shortcut to insert images
Shortcut and Macro Creation
  • Define macros for actions using special keys
    (i.e., Ctrl, Alt and Shift)
  • Create shortcuts from multiple key commands
  • Use keyboard macros within any program
  • Utilize a shared shortcut file on a network to standardize stock text across your business
  • Back up and restore shortcut data and groups
Intuitive Autocomplete
FastFox learns your most commonly typed phrases and suggests them to you as you type, so you can select and insert text on the fly. Bring the power of autocomplete to all your typing.

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