Organise and Work with Snippets

This page contains further guidance on how to keep on top of your TypeIt4Me data. It explains how you can more easily identify and distinguish between similar snippets at a glance, by giving them descriptive labels. It also covers how to search your sets for specific snippets. The section wraps up with tips for controlling how or whether snippets should appear in the TypeIt4Me menu for picking manually.

Label snippets

Your snippets can have (optional) descriptive labels. Some of your longer, boilerplate TypeIt4Me snippets could be hard to distinguish at a glance when browsing your sets. Even shorter ones like phone numbers may be difficult to tell apart. If you find this is the case and you sometimes have difficulty spotting the difference between very similar snippets, add a unique label to each one.

When you add a label to a snippet, this will be displayed in its preview in the list of snippets. When browsing the list, you’ll see the text of the label on the second line instead of the default preview, which is normally the first few characters of the main content.

Display snippets in TypeIt4Me’s point-and-click menu

TypeIt4Me offers a point-and-click menu as an alternative to expanding abbreviations as they’re typed. Clicking on a snippet in the menu will insert it at the cursor in whichever app you’re using. By default, the menu lists all the snippets in the currently active sets, showing the abbreviations alongside the labels if you have labelled them, or all or part of the snippet content if you haven’t.

You can change this and assign different behaviours to individual snippets. It’s possible to display none, some or all of your abbreviations in the menu, setting each one to show just the snippet, just the label, both or nothing at all.

To change the way a snippet is displayed in the TypeIt4Me menu:

1. Bring up the main app window and click in the list of snippets to select the one you want.
2. Click on the Settings button at the top right of the toolbar.
3. Select the display style you want from the options at the bottom of the snippet settings menu.

To apply the same menu display setting to multiple snippets at once:

1. Select the snippets by command-clicking on them in the list (or press command-A to select all the snippets in the set you’re viewing.)
2. Click on the Settings button in the toolbar.
3. Select your desired display style from the list of options. This will be applied to all the selected snippets.

Search abbreviations and snippets

Over time, you may build a substantial library of shorthand abbreviations. It’s not uncommon for TypeIt4Me sets to contain hundreds or even thousands of snippets. This might sound daunting to manage, but fortunately you can:

• Change the sort order of snippets
• Narrow the list of snippets with a search filter
• Open a search window with a keyboard shortcut

These three features can be invaluable for taming large snippet libraries. Between them, they can help you to zero in and find specific snippets you may be looking to edit or remove.

Search by sorting

There are eight principle ways you can sort your TypeIt4Me snippets. Additionally, the order of each of these can be reversed, giving you a total of sixteen different ways to view your list.

Snippets can be sorted using any of the following criteria:

• Abbreviation (alphabetical or reverse alphabetical order)

• Custom (drag individual snippets into your preferred order

• Date created (newest at the top)

• Date modified (most recently modified at the top)

• Label (alphabetical order)

• Most recently used (most recently expanded abbreviations at the top

• Most used (most frequently used snippets at the top

• Snippet content (alphabetical or reverse alphabetical order)

Search by filtering

To find a snippet that contains a particular word or string, type one or more characters into the Search filter field. The list of snippets will shrink to show only those that contain the combination of letters, numbers and / or symbols you typed. The match could be anywhere in the abbreviation, the label or the snippet contents.

As shown here, with the bundled Example Snippets set active typing the letters em into the filter narrows the list down to three snippet results. The first two results in the list contain the letters em in their labels (email). The last result appears because in the content of the snippet the letters em are again found in the word email.

Use the floating search window

You can assign a “Search snippets” keyboard shortcut in the Hot Keys section of TypeIt4Me’s settings. This will summon up a snippet search window that floats over whichever app you’re using.

Punch in your keyboard shortcut to open the window, then type a few characters into the search field. Matching results from across all active sets will show up in a list below the search field. A preview pane below that will show the full content of the selected result, with the matching string highlighted.

Use the arrow keys to move through the list of results and hit the return key to insert the snippet you want. Or if you just wanted to know which set a particular snippet is contained in so you can find it and edit it, make a note of the set name as displayed in one of the search result columns. You can then head to the main TypeIt4Me window, select that set in the sidebar and locate the snippet you’re looking to edit.

To dismiss the floating search window without expanding anything, just press the hotkey again. It works as a toggle.