Find Your Snippets

It is the nature of snippet collections to grow larger and larger, and it is the nature of the human brain to lose track of what’s contained in large collections of stuff: this is why no one really knows what’s in the attic/basement/sock drawer/garage/cabinet/self-storage locker.

TextExpander, however, can offer you several kinds of assistance to help you quickly track down the snippet you want, even if you have managed to spawn thousands of the critters.

Browse Your Snippets

It almost goes without saying, but the TextExpander window itself is a good place to start when you want to find a particular snippet and see what it contains. Figure 22 shows my TextExpander window with one of the snippet groups toggled open to reveal its contents.

As you should know by now, when you select a snippet’s label in the Groups list, the right side of the window shows the snippet’s contents. While you normally use this feature to edit a snippet, you can also use it to browse your collection quickly: just press the Up and Down arrow keys on your keyboard to move from snippet label to snippet label, revealing the contents of each snippet in the right side of the window. When you arrow to a closed group folder in the Groups list, use the Right arrow key to toggle that folder open (the Left arrow key closes an open group folder).

Furthermore, you don’t even have to arrow to a snippet to see its contents. As shown in Figure 22, previously, you can hover your pointer over a snippet’s label in the Group’s list to see a help tag that displays the snippet’s entire contents.

You can also create print the snippets in any collection along with their abbreviations. Simply select the group folder, or any snippet in the group, and choose File > Print Group “group-name” (Command-P). This command prints a list showing each snippet’s abbreviation, followed by its contents, for the selected group. You can also print out your entire snippet collection by choosing File > Print All Groups (Option-Command-P), although this might churn through a ream of paper if you have many hundreds or thousands of snippets.

Search and Filter Your Snippets

You can do more than just browse the TextExpander window in search of the snippet of your dreams. You can, instead, use either the Filter field in the TextExpander window or the Search Snippets field in the TextExpander quick-access menu. The second option, the Search Snippets field in the quick-access menu, is an especially quick way to look up and insert a snippet.

Filter in the Window

Figure 23 shows the TextExpander window with some text entered in the Filter field.

Like the familiar Finder Search field, the more you type in the Filter field, the more refined are the search results that it displays: TextExpander shows only those snippets that match the contents of the Filter field, whether in their snippet contents, their labels, or their abbreviations. Matching text is highlighted in yellow in the Groups list.

To start filtering, click in the Filter field, or if the TextExpander menu is showing (read Manage Your Interfaces), choose Edit > Find > Filter (Command-F) to begin a filter search; the keyboard command also works even when the TextExpander menu is not showing as long as the TextExpander window is visible and frontmost.

Search in the Menu

When the TextExpander window is not visible, you can still search for snippets: the first item on the TextExpander quick-access menu is a Search Snippets field. Figure 24 shows a search from that menu.

When you enter text into the TextExpander quick-access menu’s Search Snippets field, it lists every snippet that matches the field’s contents. What’s more, it assigns a shortcut Command-key to the first nine matches, so you can quickly type that key combination to insert the snippet into the current text-editing environment.

Search Inline

To help you stay “in the flow” as you work, TextExpander provides a search feature that you can use as you’re typing: Inline Search. You can press a hotkey combination (see Use Hotkeys) to see a search panel appear as close as possible to where you are currently typing. The panel has a search field containing the last word you typed before pressing the hotkey, and a list of snippets that match (Figure 25).

To insert a snippet from the list, click it or press the Command key combination assigned to it in the list. You can also clear the field and type something else for which to search.

To dismiss the search panel without choosing anything, press the Escape key or click outside the panel.