Abbreviations, Snippets and Sets

This page covers the basics of creating, editing and managing your TypeIt4Me data. It explains how abbreviations, snippets and sets work and how you will use these to build up your own personal shorthand library.

Add Snippets and Define Your Abbreviations

If there’s a word, phrase or other block of text that you find yourself frequently typing, turn it into a ‘snippet’ that TypeIt4Me can type for you. Decide on a short, easy-to-remember abbreviation that will represent it, then copy or type the content into TypeIt4Me and assign your chosen abbreviation to it. Once defined, whenever you type the abbreviation (almost) anywhere on your Mac, TypeIt4Me will instantly replace it with the full ‘snippet’ of content for you.

There are two ways to add a new snippet to your library, which we’ll look at next.

“Add a Snippet…” from the Clipboard

Imagine you are browsing in Safari and there’s some text in a web page discussing Steve Jobs’ myriad successes that you want to add to your collection of snippets. For instance, you may want to abbreviate Apple Computer Company and have it expanded for you whenever you type the letters apcc.

Begin by selecting and copying to the clipboard the text you want to abbreviate: in this case, Apple Computer Company. Next, pull down the TypeIt4Me menu and click on the Add a Snippet… option.

A window will open prompting you to add a snippet with Appl as its abbreviation. Why Appl? By default, TypeIt4Me uses the first four letters on the clipboard to suggest the abbreviation, but you are of course free to change this to something more suitable. For this example, we’ll change it to apcc. Add an optional descriptive label if you like, then pick the ‘set’ (group) of snippets to which the new entry should be added. If you don’t specify, it will default to saving to the last set you selected. If there’s any rich formatting you’d rather not keep, click the “Plain text” radio button. When you’re done, click the Add this Snippet button and dismiss the window.

Pretty painless, all in all, no? You may want to consult the Settings section to learn how to define a hot key for adding a snippet this way. It’ll save you reaching for the menu bar.

Define snippets from scratch

Open the main TypeIt4Me app window and click the “Create a snippet” button in the toolbar or press command+N on your keyboard. A new, empty snippet will be added to the list and the cursor will appear in the Abbreviation field, ready for you to start entering content.

Type your chosen abbreviation, then move on to the main Snippet contents field and type what you want the abbreviation to become when TypeIt4Me expands it. You can leave the Label field blank* or type a descriptive explanation summarising the content of the snippet if needed. Your snippet will be saved automatically as soon as you click anywhere else in the list of snippets or the sidebar, or when you switch to another app.

Include pictures, styling and hyperlinked text in snippets

OK, so we’ve reviewed how to create basic plain text snippets. Now it’s time to look at the good stuff. A major benefit of using a dedicated text expander like TypeIt4Me is that you can include pictures, styled text and more in your snippets. If you’ve been getting by with just Apple’s text replacements feature until now, you’ll likely come to wonder how you ever managed without this ability. Let’s dive in.

Add a picture to a snippet

Perhaps you’re tired of having to hunt around for that This Is Fine reaction gif you’ve been using a *lot* lately. You want to create a snippet that can be fired off with a couple of keystrokes to insert the gif into your emails without missing a beat. There are a couple of ways you can do that.

Method #1: Copy and Paste

1. Locate the picture you want to insert.
2. Copy it to the clipboard.
3. Place the cursor in your snippet.
4. Make sure the snippet contents pulldown menu is set to “Rich text / pictures.”
5. Paste your image in.

Method #2: Add a picture via the toolbar

1. Place the cursor in your snippet.
2. Click on the Add a picture button in the TypeIt4Me toolbar.
3. Navigate to the image file you want to add, select it and click Open.

Method #3: Drag-and-drop to add a picture

1. Select your snippet and make sure the snippet contents pulldown is set to “Rich text / pictures“
2. Locate the picture you want to add to your snippet.
3. Click and hold on the picture, then drag it into your snippet.

Apply formatting to the text of a snippet

At the point of expansion, plain text snippets will generally inherit the styling of any preceding text. Sometimes, you might want a snippet to expand with its own styling. If you save it as rich text, you can apply formatting and control various font attributes. Let’s look at how that works.

Change the typeface, font size, weight, color and more

To apply new styling to text in a snippet, make sure that the snippet contents pulldown menu is set to “Rich text / pictures.” Select the text you want to format and then click on the Aa (Format text) button in the toolbar. You’ll be presented with various formatting controls with which you can style the selected content as you see fit.

Include hyperlinked text in a snippet

If you want to include a clickable hyperlink in a snippet, first make sure that the snippet contents pulldown is set to “Rich text / pictures.” You can then either:

• Copy the hyperlinked content from a webpage or other document to your clipboard, then paste it into your snippet.
• Or select some text in your snippet that you want to hyperlink, then click on the formatting button in the toolbar and click on the hyperlink button. Paste your URL into the field, then click OK.

You’ll see that hovering over the hyperlinked text in your snippet will cause the mouse pointer to turn into a hand, indicating that the link is active. When you expand the snippet in an application that supports hyperlinks, it will remain clickable.**