Automating Offline — Mac Tool — TextExpander

I’ve written about learning to touch type and the things you can do you help improve your typing overall. How far you take that is up to you, whether you get customised keyboards and learn potentially faster keyboard layouts you will reach a limit.

But there is a way to increase your typing output without actually having to type.

The main way to do this is to use a text replacement tool.

The one I use the most is TextExpander, it’s by far the best of its type in the Apple ecosystem but also available on Windows too. This is important because it will sync your saved settings. In the case of TextExpander the settings or data are your snippets.

The principle of a text replacement or expansion tool is that you will write a short piece of text that can’t be confused for something you will actually need and this gets replaced by usually a longer piece of text that’s more meaningful.

If you need to type your postal address then you could type something like “xadd” and TextExpander will automatically replace that with your pre-set entire formatted address.

You can take this much further or even smaller and use it to save thinking time. For example if you can’t remember a particular number you will need to type out more than once, it will be easier to remember a shortcode system (e.g. I use it for my registered company number). Even if the shortcode/abbreviation isn’t that much shorter it can increase your speed that would have been slowed by your disrupted time in thinking or referencing information.

Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog