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Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Productivity

Typinator 2.0 released with a flood of new features

Typing tools that increase your efficiency are all the rage for anyone who has to type more than their name and credit card number on a daily basis, and ergonis just upped the ante with the release of Typinator 2.0. Competing directly with similar tools like TextExpander and TypeIt4Me, this new version of Typinator brings a virtual boatload of new features to the table, including:

  • Sets allow convenient organization of abbreviations
  • Import and export of abbreviation sets
  • Comes with auto-correction sets for English, German and French
  • Import from Textpander, TextExpander and TypeIt4Me
  • Application-specific set assignment
  • Typinator can be disabled in individual applications
  • Clipboard insertion within expansions
  • Streamlined user interface for improved conformance to Apple's guidelines
  • The abbreviation table can be sorted by abbreviation, expansion, options, and conflict status
  • Expansion of abbreviations is much faster now, even while typing extremely fast and with thousands of defined abbreviations and auto-corrections
  • Significantly reduced memory requirements, especially with large expansions
  • and much, much more

As a paid user of TextExpander, this new release of Typinator looks quite tasty indeed. I'm actually just glad the typing tool space is getting more competitive, as I can't write or work on the web without one anymore. A demo is of course available, while a single licenses sells for about $26 (EUR 19.99).

Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Productivity

SmileOnMyMac Releases TextExpander 1.3, the Customizable Typing Timesaver Tool


Earlier in May, SmileOnMyMac acquired Textpander, a really handy (and free) text insertion utility. Today, they released their first official version update in which they changed the name to TextExpander, added a few snippet-creation features and are now charging a lump-in-throat inducing price of $29.95. The new features include the ability to create snippets from selected text, snippet nesting and the ability to limit usage to an application list.

A 30-day demo is available, but I have to say: I'm really happy I backed up the disk image of the latest version of Textpander. I haven't installed this new retail version of TextExpander yet, but slapping $29.95 (without any warning) on a utility that was previously free donationware stings quite a bit (Fraser Speirs, I would argue, handled this transition a lot better with the FlickrExport 2.0 beta introduction). If any enthusiastic users of Textpander make the leap, feel free to share your impressions with the new features and whether you think it's worth $30.

[UPDATE: Peter Maurer makes a really good point: Textpander wasn't free, it was donationware. Unfortunately, the donation system clearly wasn't working, as Hawk Wings points out that many donationware-centric developers lament that only 1-2% of downloaders actually donate anything for the app. Let TextExpander serve as a good lesson for what happens when you don't show some donation love to hard working developers.]

Tip of the Day

Use Spotlight as a reference tool. Type any word in the Spotlight box and one of the top entries will be a definition. Click on it, and it will bring up the dictionary application to check the word in either the dictionary, thesaurus, Apple database, or Wikipedia.


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