Good Friday is upon us! How did that happen? It’s been a hot minute since Riccardo and I checked on the FTSE 100 with furrowed brows to watch our retirement funds evaporate in real time. Seems like a weird coincidence that whenever we have a big announcement to make, there’s a fresh international crisis unfolding. Could all this chaos be our fault? No. It’s the trade advisors who are wrong…’uns.
Anyway, let’s not dwell on Ruinous Rollercoaster Tariffs and the Whimsical Billionaires Who Profit From Them. In more topical news, we can at last reveal that TypeIt4Me is officially reborn this Easter weekend. A major new version just dropped today.
As previously teased, we’ve rebuilt our flagship app from scratch in Swift – fully sandboxed – with a speedy new engine, a revamped interface and a slew of new features. Our hair is a lot thinner and greyer than it was 3 years ago when we embarked on this folly, but after a lengthy period in beta TypeIt4Me 7.0 is now available for everyone. On Apple’s Mac App Store, no less.
At what cost? That’s the good part. Not only have we managed to keep almost everything working despite the required sandboxing, we’re also temporarily dropping the price. Until the end of April there’s a special launch offer of just $9.99, after which it will retail for $29.99* (USD). As ever, that’s a one-time purchase that allows you to keep the version you bought forever. There is no recurring subscription to worry about.
“We Can Rebuild It…”
A little while back, after one fiery crash report too many, we took a deep breath and concluded it was time to retire the Objective-C code that had underpinned our cherished text expander for decades. We took the plunge and kickstarted the process of overhauling its burnt-out innards from top to bottom, before moving on to a much needed facelift. And now TypeIt4Me 7 is ready to roll.
So what’s new? Quite a lot, actually. While it can’t compete with Lee Majors’ rugged good looks and we stopped short of pouring $6 million into it, Riccardo’s been on a mission.
It would take too long to detail every last one of the changes this rejuvenated version has to offer, but the main highlights include:
- A new UI that adopts modern macOS design language, making it easier to compose, edit, browse, move and copy snippets. Set management is also much improved.
- A streamlined new expansion engine completely rewritten in Swift and optimised to run on Apple Silicon.
- (Optional) Non-clipboard expansion of plain text snippets up to 2,000 characters in length (up from a previous maximum of 30 in version 6.)
- Variable input fields. In addition to autocue placeholders, it’s now possible to create more sophisticated fill-in-the-blanks template snippets in which you can pick options from pulldown menus.
- Global and set-level exception rules (i.e. Only expand in / Don’t expand in special behaviours).
- A dedicated snippet-level settings menu for more granular control of how individual snippets should behave.
- Pre-defined snippet sets bundled with the app (including common accented words, emoji, HTML & CSS, symbols, properly capitalised brand names etc).
- (Optional) Automated back-ups that save local copies of your snippet sets at regular intervals you specify and every time you quit the app.
- You can set a hot key combo to open the point-and-click menu.
- Undo deletion of snippets.
Further to the above, the following features that were previously only available in the old direct sale TypeIt4Me (i.e. version 6) – are making their debut on the Mac App Store:
- A floating snippet search-and-insert window you can bring up by pressing a hot key combo.
- Simultaneous activation of multiple sets (previous Mac App Store versions were limited to one active set of snippets at a time)
…Gotta catch ’em all!
In keeping with tradition, this update also ships with a very limited array of exclusive new unexpected behaviours hidden in it at no extra charge. See if you can hunt down and experience these (mostly benign) accidental Easter eggs before they melt away in a point release!
Jokes aside, the key takeaway here is we’ve been busy and while TypeIt4Me 7 may not be flawless, it is absolutely worth checking out. It will run on the 4 most recent major macOS versions, starting with Monterey 12.4.
Moving on up…
We’ve done as much as we could to make the transition to TypeIt4Me 7 as painless as possible for existing users of previous versions. Snippet sets that are already stored in iCloud will show up as soon as you open the app. Otherwise, if you have an existing .typeit4me set file to hand, just drag it straight into the new sidebar and you’ll be good to go.
As alluded to earlier, some of you may run into a few wrinkles due to sandboxing (a requirement for admission into the Mac App Store.) For example, typing statistics will not automatically be carried over; you’ll need to locate your stats file and move it to TypeIt4Me 7’s new sandbox container. We’re also waving a fond farewell to a couple of older features that most people probably don’t use any more.
AppleScript execution is no longer supported and iCloud sync is the only game in town now (i.e. no more Dropbox, Google Drive or linked remote folders.) Otherwise, we’re happy to report that the rest of the old favourite workhorse features (dynamic date math, cursor positioning etc) are still present and correct.
“…Have you heard the good news?”
Please do share all this information far and wide with any family members, friends, neighbours, co-workers, acquaintances or attractive strangers with MacBook-shaped rucksacks on the bus. They might be blissfully unaware they’re missing out. The $9.99 launch price is a steal and the offer runs through to April 30th.
We’d like to extend our warmest thanks and appreciation once again to everyone who volunteered to test the beta during the final gestation phase of development (especially you, Marc and Julie). As a token of our gratitude, we’ll be sending out Mac App Store redemption codes to the testers who helped us identify and fix the 100+ bugs we’ve squashed in the last 9 months. We couldn’t have done it without you.
On a related note, we’re also going to do whatever we can to help out anyone who paid for a previous version of TypeIt4Me within the last trimester, who is now kicking themselves for not having waited. Sit tight. We’ll have more to say on this point in the next few days, once we’ve tackled the crippling sleep debt we’ve built up in these final weeks leading up to release.
That’s about all for now. Thank you for bearing with us – and for reading all the way down to here! We hope you’ll enjoy using TypeIt4Me 7 as much as we’ve enjoyed the challenge of breathing new life into our most enduring creation. Have at it.
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*Yes, that’s a few dollars more than it used to cost before Brexit, COVID-19 lockdowns, 5 (five) rogue prime ministers and a calamitous war in Europe upset the applecart, compounding runaway inflation here in the UK. See-sawing global trade upheaval is not expected to alleviate cost-of-living pressures anytime soon and hey, app developers need to eat.
