Use TextExpander touch

When you hit the road armed with your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, you don’t have to leave TextExpander behind. An iOS app from Smile, TextExpander touch, is available from the iTunes App Store for $4.99. The app provides much of the capability of the Mac application, but with its features tailored for the iOS fingertip environment.

Naturally, the app can’t do everything that the Mac version can do: just as an iOS device doesn’t replicate all the capabilities of a traditional computer, the iOS version of TextExpander doesn’t replicate all the capabilities of its Mac sibling. But it can do a lot, and, with Apple’s addition of custom third-party keyboards in recent versions of iOS, you can expand your snippets in almost any iOS app that allows typing by using the TextExpander touch keyboard.

This appendix provides a brief look at how to Manage Your Groups, Use the TextExpander Keyboard, Make and Edit Snippets, and Exchange Snippets among Devices, as well as how to Work in the App to use its note writing and other capabilities.

Manage Your Groups

Like its Mac sibling, TextExpander touch collects its snippets in groups, where you can arrange them and apply group-specific settings. To see your groups, click Group at the top of the TextExpander touch screen (Figure 44).

You can do the following from the Groups list:

• See the snippets in a group: Tap the name of any group to see the snippets that it contains. You can then Make and Edit Snippets in that group.
• Arrange the groups in the list: Tap Edit at the top of the Groups list. Then, to move a group in the list, drag the Move icon at the right of a group’s name up or down. To delete a group, tap the group’s Delete icon and then tap Delete to confirm. Tap Done at the top of the screen when you have finished arranging your groups.
• Add a new group: Click the Add button below the Groups list and then tap the kind of group to add. Aside from a new empty group, you can add one from a group shared over the local network, from a predefined group, or from a URL (see Add a Group and Share over a Local Network).
• Edit a group’s settings: Tap the group’s information icon to see and alter a group’s settings (Figure 45). Tap Done on the settings screen to return to the Groups list.

Unlike a group’s settings in TextExpander for the Mac (see Customize Group Settings), the list of group settings you can change in TextExpander touch is short:

• Change a group’s name: Edit the name just as you would any text on iOS. When you first view the settings, the group’s name is already selected and the keyboard available.
• Ignore on iOS: Tap this button to have TextExpander touch ignore any abbreviations you type for snippets that are in this group.

You can also tap Duplicate to make a copy of the group, and tap Send via Local Network if you want to send the group to another local device (see Share over a Local Network).

Make and Edit Snippets

Tap a snippet group in the Groups list to see its snippets, and then do one of the following:

• Make a new snippet: Tap the Add button at the bottom of the screen.
• Edit a snippet: Tap a snippet in the group’s list of snippets.

The Add Snippet screen provides a field for the snippet’s abbreviation and a Content field (Figure 46). Not surprisingly, the Edit Snippet screen looks almost exactly like the Add Snippet screen.

All new snippets start out as Plain text. When you add or edit a snippet your actions take effect immediately.

The key to customizing your snippet contents is hidden away in the context menu that appears when you select text in the snippet’s Content field (Figure 47).

You can customize your snippet in the following ways from this menu (you may have to tap the menu’s arrow button to get to the menu items you need):

• Make a Formatted snippet: Tap Format to apply a style, color, font, or size to any part of the snippet’s content; the snippet’s type automatically becomes Formatted. You can make the snippet type Plain again by removing any changes you have applied.
• Insert macros: Tap Insert to insert the macros described in Create and Use Complex Snippets.
• Make a script snippet: Tap JavaScript. JavaScript snippets are the only kind of script snippet you can create with TextExpander touch, and only traditional JavaScript at that; you can’t use JavaScript for Automation. If the snippet already contains text, each paragraph is enclosed within a TextExpander.appendOutput() statement (see Okay, Maybe a Little Farther).

You can also do the following with a snippet on the Edit Snippet screen:

• Share it: Tap the standard iOS Share button at the bottom left of the screen, and then choose how to share the snippet from the choices presented.
• Move it to a different group: Tap the Folder button at the bottom center of the screen, and then tap the group to which you want to move the snippet. You can also create a new group into which to move the snippet: scroll to the bottom of the group list that the Folder button brings up to see the Create Group button.
• Preview it: Tap the Preview button at the screen’s bottom right to see a preview of the expanded snippet.

On smaller screen iOS devices, tap the Back button at the top of the screen when you finish adding or editing a snippet to get back to the snippets list.

Use the TextExpander Keyboard

With Apple’s introduction of custom keyboard support in iOS, TextExpander touch became capable of expanding snippets in almost every iOS app; all you need do is switch to the TextExpander touch custom keyboard (Figure 48).

Here’s how you enable the keyboard on your iOS device:

1. On your device, open the Settings app.
2. Tap General > Keyboard > Keyboards to see the list of available keyboards.
3. Tap Add New Keyboard and then tap TextExpander.
4. Switch on one of languages that the TextExpander keyboard supports, and then tap Done to return to the list of active keyboards.
5. On the Keyboards screen, tap the TextExpander keyboard you just activated and then tap to switch on Allow Full Access. Snippets won’t expand unless Allow Full Access is enabled.

You can now switch to the TextExpander keyboard from other keyboards: tap a keyboard’s globe key to switch among your device’s installed keyboards until you get to the TextExpander keyboard. To switch from the TextExpander keyboard to another keyboard, tap the TextExpander keyboard’s Smile key.

Work in the App

Before the introduction of custom keyboards in iOS, TextExpander touch could not avail itself of underlying iOS capabilities to make its power available in other apps’ text-editing environments. So Smile had to create alternative methods for sharing snippets with third-party apps.

Now, even though TextExpander touch can provide a system-wide custom keyboard, Smile still provides a way for individual third-party apps to enable TextExpander’s capabilities from the standard iOS keyboard. This means you can type snippets (without switching keyboards) in apps that are TextExpander-savvy—see Expand in Compatible Apps. The advantage: you can use all the features of the standard iOS keyboard, such as predictive text and dictation.

TextExpander touch also includes its own note-taking environment that you can use to compose texts and in which you can type snippets that expand just as they do on a Mac from any iOS text keyboard. To switch to that environment, tap Notes at the top of the main TextExpander touch screen (Figure 49).

You can create multiple notes using TextExpander touch (on a small-screen device, tap the Notes drawer button to see your list of notes), and use formatted text in them. You can also send notes to other apps with a tap of the Share button, which produces a popover that offers you various ways to share your TextExpander notes.

Adjust Typing Settings

If you work with snippets in TextExpander touch or in compatible apps using a keyboard other than the TextExpander touch custom keyboard (described just ahead), you should consider making some changes to TextExpander touch’s settings. To get to the Settings screen, tap the Settings button; on small-screen devices, view Groups on the main TextExpander touch screen to get to that button.

These are the TextExpander touch settings you may want to modify:

• Snippet Matching: Turn on Ignore Case if you don’t ordinarily differentiate your abbreviations by case.
• Keyboard: Turn off Auto-Correction and Auto-Capitalization, so that iOS won’t try to correct the spelling or case of your snippet abbreviations.
• Emailing: If you use the TextExpander touch note-taking environment to write email, switch on First Line Subject to have the first line of your note become an email message’s subject when you tap the Share button and then send your note as email.

Expand in Compatible Apps

TextExpander touch makes it possible for a properly designed app to share TextExpander touch’s snippets and to expand them from the standard iOS keyboard in its own text-editing environment.

Many such iOS apps have been created, but, before those apps can expand snippets, you must first set up TextExpander touch to share snippets with other apps:

1. In TextExpander touch, tap the Settings button . (On small-screen devices you can find that button on the main TextExpander touch screen when Groups is selected.)
2. Under TextExpander-enhanced Apps, turn on the Share Snippets switch.

Keep in mind that you also usually need to enable TextExpander in the settings for any TextExpander-enhanced app where you want to expand snippets.

The list of apps that can use TextExpander touch’s snippets is expanding all the time. These apps range from blogging apps to note-taking apps to task-management apps and more. You can find the complete list of TextExpander touch compatible apps on Smile’s site.

Exchange Snippets among Devices

Up until now I’ve avoided the issue of where you get your snippets for TextExpander touch, other than telling you how to create new ones. But if you have been using TextExpander on your Mac, you have probably already put a lot of time, ingenuity, and energy into creating a snippet collection. Happily, you don’t have to go to all of that trouble again with TextExpander touch on your iOS device: you can share snippet groups between your Mac and your iOS device over a local area wireless network. Or, even more conveniently, you can sync all of your snippets between your iOS device(s) and your Mac(s) via iCloud or Dropbox.

Which method should you choose? It comes down to a choice between sharing your snippets à la carte or not:

• Local area sharing: This method allows you to share snippets on a group-by-group basis between Macs and iOS devices or between iOS devices (you can’t locally share between Macs). If you want your devices to share only specific snippet groups while also retaining snippets that are not shared between devices, use this method. The drawback to this method is that it doesn’t synchronize changes: after you share a group, you can add, delete, and modify its snippets on your iOS device or your Mac and those changes won’t transfer until the next time you manually share the group again.
• Cloud syncing: This method, as you saw in Sync with the Cloud, stores your snippet collection in a cloud service of your choice. Every device, Mac or iOS, that uses that service’s account to sync snippets ends up with exactly the same snippet collections. Furthermore, this method provides actual syncing: when you change, add, or delete a snippet on one device, that change occurs on all the devices that sync with the same cloud account. The drawback is that you can’t have some shared snippet groups and other non-shared groups on the same device: it’s all or nothing.

There is no right or wrong choice here. Pick the one that fits your working style and needs. I explain how to set up both methods in the following two sections.

Share over a Local Network

To share snippets from your Mac over a local network, you need to configure TextExpander on your Mac to allow such sharing:

1. Choose TextExpander > Preferences > Sync.
2. Select Share Snippets on Local Networks with Other Devices (iPhone, iPod, iPad), as shown in Figure 50.

You must also configure TextExpander touch to share snippets over a local network:

1. In TextExpander touch, tap the Settings button (on small-screen devices that button is on the main TextExpander touch screen when Groups is selected).
2. Under Local Network Sharing, tap the Share Groups switch to turn it on.

With those settings enabled, your devices can exchange snippet groups using your local wireless network.

When you exchange snippets, you should have both devices at hand, since you need to respond to prompts on each.

Here’s how to get a snippets group from one device to another:

1. Make sure that TextExpander is running on each device.
2. On the main TextExpander touch screen, tap Groups to see the Groups list.
3. At the bottom of the Groups list, tap the Add button, and then, in the popover that appears, tap Add via Local Network.
4. In the TextExpander Devices window that appears, tap the network name of the other device.
5. In the list of snippet groups that appears, tap the group you want to request from the other device.
6. On the sending device, in the TextExpander Group Requested dialog that appears (Figure 51), click Send.

In a few seconds, the group appears in the requesting device’s Groups list.

Although a Mac can’t initiate a request to another device over a local network, you can still send a snippet group from an iOS device to your Mac. Here’s how you do it:

1. Make sure that TextExpander is running on your Mac.
2. On your iOS device, open TextExpander touch.
3. Navigate to the Groups list on your iOS device, and then tap the information button for group you want to send to your Mac.
4. Tap Send via Local Network.
5. In the list of computers that appears, tap the network name of your Mac.
6. On your Mac, in the TextExpander Group Received dialog, click Add.

Keep in mind that some text-editing environments on an iOS device support only plain text. Others may support styled text but not images. You may want to create specific groups on your Mac that contain snippets suitable for sharing with iOS devices.

Share with the Cloud

To synchronize snippets between devices, the devices must have syncing enabled; see Sync with the Cloud to learn how to do this on your Mac. Unlike the Mac, TextExpander touch can only sync snippets via Dropbox or iCloud.

Here’s how you set up syncing with TextExpander touch:

1. In TextExpander touch, tap the Settings button (on small-screen devices that button is on the main TextExpander touch screen when Groups is selected).
2. Under Synchronization, tap Sync Snippets.
3. On the Sync Snippets screen, you’ll see choices that mirror those described for the Mac in Sync with the Cloud; read that topic for a more complete discussion of snippet syncing via the cloud. You have these syncing choices in TextExpander touch:
   • iCloud Drive: Under the iCloud Drive heading, tap Link to Snippets to sync with snippets already stored in iCloud; tap Save Snippets As to save your TextExpander snippets in a folder on iCloud Drive so other devices can sync with them.
   • Dropbox: Under the Dropbox heading, tap Link to Dropbox Snippets to sync with snippets stored in an arbitrary Dropbox folder; tap Save Snippets to Dropbox Folder to save your snippets in a folder on Dropbox so another device can sync with them.
   • Compatibility Sync: Under the Compatibility Sync heading, tap Compatibility Sync to sync your snippets with those stored in the Dropbox/TextExpander folder required by older versions of TextExpander and TextExpander touch.

From this point on, any changes you make to the snippet collection on any synced device are synced between your devices—if, of course, your devices are connected to the Internet.