App Review: TextExpander

TextExpander

Wouldn’t it be great if you could type “ipnz” on your iPhone and then have your iPhone automatically convert that abbreviation to “iPhonewzealand”? Well, TextExpander by SmileOnMyMac lets you do just that. TextExpander has one sole purpose in it’s life – to make typing on your iPhone a breeze.

Read on for more.

TextExpander is a great productivity app for making typing MUCH easier. I have been using this app since it’s release in late 2009. The app has some restrictions due to the iPhone OS and is certainly not cheap at $6.49 but I still find this a must-have app which is used daily.

Upon launching the app you are greeted with a pretty standard iPhone app screen. Tap the + symbol and you’re off and running.

Opening screen

The app does exactly what the title would suggest and expands text. Simply enter the abbreviation followed by what you would like the app to convert the abbreviation to, hit done and it’s stored and ready to use. Below I have added the text ‘rl10′ and converted this to “Running late, I will be there in 10 minutes”.

Converted Snippet

“Snippets” as the app calls them can be organized into folders as you like. The current date and time can also be added as a text snippet. Simply enter ‘ttime’ for the snippet and %1I:%M %p for the content or ‘ddate’ for the snippet and %B %e, %Y for the content to get your current time and date respectively.

Time & Date Snippet

Time & Date Converted

The trick to adding an abbreviation to this app is that you shouldn’t use any ‘real’ words that you would use in everyday situations.  For example, do not use the word ‘email’ to type your email address, otherwise every time you type the word ‘email’ your email address will pop up. Instead, the app suggests you use ‘eemail’ or another word which is not used in normal everyday typing. The app also has a handy case-sensitive on/off option in the settings.

Email Snippet

There really are no limitations to the shortcuts you can use (trust me I have tried), one or two letters could literally be converted to type a whole email if you so wished.

Email Signature

If you’re thinking this app sounds great but it’s going to take you an eternity to type and store all your shortcuts on your iPhone, well you’re in luck as there is also a Mac OSX app which will allow you to simply type all your shortcuts into your Mac and sync them over your wireless network. A Windows version is also available however this is 3rd party unlike the Mac version which is made by the developers of the iPhone app. Dropbox and MobileMe sync options are also available.

Mac version sync option

As I mentioned in the introduction to this review the app has some limitations but these are mainly down to the iPhone OS and its current restrictions. What this means is that in order to use this app to type text messages or email you need to compose the message within the app and then send to the native email/text app.

Send to native apps

The app however is integrated into many of the well known Twitter apps, you simply enable TextExpander in the Twitter app settings and all your shortcuts are ready to use without the need for the TextExpander app to be open.

Twitter options

Compose your new snippet in your twitter app.

Snippet within Twitter app

And your TextExpander content for the snippet is displayed.

Converted snippet in Twitter

I contacted the developers of the app this week to enquire as to how they expect this app to work with iPhone OS4 and its ability to multitask. They promptly replied telling me that they are hoping to have this app fully integrated to the OS with the OS4 multitasking, the developers have said that although they hope to have a set-up whereby if the app is running the shortcuts will be available, there is nothing at this time to suggest that this will be permitted in OS4 and until then it will only be available in apps with built-in TextExpander options.

The Mac app gives you a great sense of what it would be like on the iPhone with full OS integration as when the app is running on your Mac the shortcuts are available throughout the OS. The Mac app even goes so far as to allow pictures for shortcuts. Whether this happens or not or if Apple allow the integration with native apps like text and email remains to be seen, however the app is still a great utility for anybody looking to cut down on typing time.

What do you think iPhonewzealanders? Are you currently using or have you tried this app? Would this app be of use to you or save you any time? Or would you wait for full OS integration before dropping the dollars? Let us know in the comments.