TextExpander: Textpander makes good
Peter Maurer’s text snippet manager, Textpander, is my third favourite productivity app after Quicksilver 
and Spell Catcher X .
I save enormous amounts of time by using it to store my various email signatures (and much more).
Peter sold the app to SmileOnMyMac a few weeks ago where it has now reappeared officially as TextExpander .
The new version (1.3) has gained some new features. You can now reference other snippets as variables via “%snippet:[abbreviation]%” and create snippets directly from selected text by means of the TextExpander Service. An initial Japanese localisation has also been added.
TextExpander is shareware (USD 29.95). SmileOnMyMac is offering free registration to everyone who gave money when the app was donation-ware. If you did, you should be getting an email containing the registration key for the new version.
UPDATE: See how TextExpander ranks among the five apps that most boost my productivity in a post on X Factor .
Similar Posts:
- Textexpander 1.4: Flexible delimiters, old logo
- TypeIt4Me 3.0: Loads of new features
- TextExpander auto-corrections list
- Textpander 1.2.1: On-the-fly typing accelerator
- Clever TextExpander clipboard snippet trick
Tags: helpful apps, Productivity, snippets, textexpander, Textpander
May 24th, 2006 at 3:47 am
Neat. I didn’t know about Spell Catcher X.
I know you’re not going to switch, but just to let you know, in Thunderbird you can setup “identities” with each of your accounts. That is, I have one IMAP account, but it has four or five “identities” that have different addresses and signatures attached to them.
Not only do those “identities” show up in a drop down box when I compose a message, but if I respond to a message, Thunderbird is smart enough to use the “To” (or “Cc”) address in the existing message to figure out which “identity” it should use. This lets me respond to people without having to think about changing my “From” address. It also puts the right signature on all of my messages.
I know that you can have a drop down menu of signatures in Apple Mail, but to my knowledge it has nothing this smart.
Additionally, I think lots of people setup dummy accounts in Thunderbird to implement something similar to “identities,” but doing it that way doesn’t let Thunderbird automatically pick an identity for you on response. That’s why it’s better to have one account with 5 “identities” on it than having 5 accounts (where 4 of them don’t ever get checked).
May 24th, 2006 at 5:39 am
Textpander has always been a great app. Wondering if the new app allows for this: essentially inserting text I’d like _around_ a word — something similar to the keyboard shortcuts that can be created and assigned for snippets in TextMate.
Would be brilliant if this kind of functionality was available globally through Textexpander.
Hell, maybe this is already in Textpander and I didn’t know it.
May 24th, 2006 at 8:04 am
That would be neat. The “wrap” function and the ability to set tab stops in TextMate are both great features that would make TextExpander even better.
May 24th, 2006 at 11:23 am
But why associate identities with an IMAP account? I prefer Mulberry’s method of separate IMAP/POP3/local (incoming) and SMTP (outgoing) accounts, with identities that use the latter and other custom settings like those you described for Thunderbird. Replies to messages within a single IMAP/POP3/local mailbox will use the SMTP server specified in the current identity. Like TBird, the identity may be auto-selected by matching the recipient address in the original message. One thing you can’t do is auto-select an identity based on the recipient of the reply. And composing a new message uses the default identity so you have to remember to manually change it if necessary.
The key difference is Mulberry identities only use SMTP account info (often inherited from a default identity), unlike combined IMAP/SMTP (or POP3/SMTP) TBird accounts that contain identities. There’s never any need for “dummy” accounts because sender information is encapsulated within identities instead of being unnecessarily associated with recipient IMAP/POP3 accounts.
I wish other mail clients had that sort of flexibility with a combination of account separation and identities.
Back to the topic… $30 for TextExpander sticker-shocked me out of a potential purchase. Wish I’d donated for Textpander even though I haven’t used it much. Maybe I should donate now for Peter’s other apps I’m interested in just in case he decides to “sell out” any of them even before I use them. ;-)
May 24th, 2006 at 11:33 am
I must be out of step, or got used to the expensive luxuries a barrister-wife provides.
I didn’t think that the price was too steep for something that offers such productivity gains.
Say that it helps me work 5% faster when I am writing. I only have to earn USD 600 for it to have paid its way, and after that I am reaping the benefits in perpetuity.
May 24th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
I definitely think $30 is worth it for a program like Text(ex)pander if you use it often enough.
Regarding TBird and Mulberry… One big reason why I can’t be convinced to switch to Mulberry is that… well, it’s gone. It sounded great, but it’s no more. :( So I just have to make do with what I’ve got.
Additionally, perhaps I don’t understand, but Thunderbird does let you completely separate SMTP servers with e-mail accounts. I *think* if it would just allow you to make “global” identities (rather than identities that have to be tied to one particular account) then it would be perfect and do everything you want it to do.
(the reason I brought up identities is that it simplifies the insertion of signatures)
The reason why I put multiple identities under my single IMAP account is that all of my e-mail addresses forward to one single place. That allows me to have a more complete archive of all my mail. If I need separation, I’ll do filtering (and that will happen on the server, so that wherever I am I can have a complete view of all of my mail). So the Thunderbird setup as-is (without “global identities”) works great for me.
May 24th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
Is Peter still working on TextExpander, or has SmileOnMyMac taken over the development with their own people?
May 24th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
Peter tells me that he is “not really involved” with TextExpander’s development anymore.
May 25th, 2006 at 4:14 am
SmileOnMyMac has taken over development of TextExpander, and Peter is kind enough to answer an occasional question. We’ll add invetigating “text wrapping” to our feature request list. If you have more requests, please send them to textexpander@smileonmymac.com.
For the story of the Textpander to TextExpander evolution straight from the source, please visit our blog:
http://smileonmymac.net/blog
May 25th, 2006 at 7:41 am
I agree, though my Textpander usage still hadn’t reached a point where I’d have gladly donated for it. I’ve contributed for other donation-ware products after they’ve become keepers. Pretty sure Textpander would have already qualified if I’d taken time to configure it more thoroughly.
Even if it were possible it would be foolish buying into (pun intended) a dead product. I started to seriously doubt Mulberry’s future (on OS X anyway) after Apple’s Intel announcement because of the effort it would have taken to convert from CodeWarrior to Xcode with limited Cyrusoft/ISAMET resources. Cyrus Daboo was already stretched thin doing product development and support. He is/was doing something for Apple though that’s as much as I’ve heard. I’d guess more mail server than client stuff.
Thanks for the discussion of identities. In Mulberry and Thunderbird they’re an acknowledgment that users may want to use different sender addresses/attributes compared with Mail’s feebly limited multi-address support.
September 27th, 2006 at 1:15 am
[...] One of the things that most helps me to move quickly and efficiently through my email messages is the text snippet manager TextExpander. [...]