Review: TextExpander Touch

Saturday, September 11, 2010

One of the things we wanted to do with iExpression 1.3 was make it easier (especially for iPhone users) to get content into iExpression. The biggest restriction is the keyboard (well, the smallest restriction I suppose). We had a couple of ideas ourselves, but I happened to be listening to an episode of a podcast, i forget which, that mentioned an app called TextExpander touch. I had looked at TextExpander on the Mac a few years ago, but had never really set it up, and hadn’t gotten the benefit as a result. However, they were providing an SDK and I thought it might be appropriate. The fundamental promise of TextExpander is that it will watch for you to type some abbreviation (called a Snippet) and then expand it up into the full text.

TextExpander Touch

TextExpander touch on iOS devices works in almost exactly the same way as it does on the Mac. On compatible apps it watches for snippets to be typed, and with a pop (literally) blows them up into their full strings. However, it has a number of challenges that aren’t there on the Mac. The most significant is that whilst on the Mac it is possible for the Smile Software team to hook into every text-entry control on your Mac, the tight restrictions Apple place on how apps can share code and functionality mean this isn’t possible.

The folks at Smile Software have a solution to that, a simple API that they freely distribute that any app developer can download and integrate with their tool. I want this to be an end-user review, but I can say that we had TextExpander integrated with our existing UI in under 10 minutes, and although we completely redeveloped the UI this release, it was no harder to integrate with our new designs. I can’t imagine it being made any easier.

Back to users. TextExpander Touch is a universal app, meaning you only need to buy it once, and then run it on either device, each receiving it’s own dedicated UI. Like our own iExpression Smile have not created a radically different UI (not, for example, like Twitter on iPad vs. iPhone) but have instead taken the obvious opportunities to use the extended real-estate. As we’ve said previously, the iPad is a different enough design challenge to make this enough work on its own and in fact I think unless your application lends itself to this kind of UI migration it does not make sense to make paid applications universal. If it’s going to be free on both platforms, you might as well lump it all in together!

Although it comes pre-populated with a snippet group (you can create more groups of your own), the real value of TextExpander Touch comes when you add your own snippets. We had two in mind right from the outset… one for iExpression and one for the “Posted by iExpression” lump of HTML that appears at the bottom of our posts. These two examples actually demonstrate two key and strong reasons to go and buy TextExpander Touch right now.

Tough/Tedious to Type

We’re very happy with iExpression as product name, but iOS continually wants to correct the capitalisation! IExpression or iexpression are its automatic substitutions depending on where you are in the sentences, and it’s infuriating. So we set-up a snippet ‘ixp’ to expand out to iExpression. iOS leaves TextExpander Touch expansions alone (I don’t know or care why, I’m just glad it does). In short, it’s heaven and it’s become a habit that as soon as I become sick of typing something, I go and add a snippet for it. One of the other neat features is that you can sync your snippet library between all of your iOS devices (your Mac too if you wish). This is also critical as it means you don’t waste time setting up all your snippet groups to be the same. The value of this app is dependant on you being able to remember the snippet, so consistency across all of your devices is NOT optional.

Needs to be Consistently Typed

You’ll all be familiar with the standard "Posted by iExpression" tag we add to our posts made by i[removed]duh). We want it to look the same each time, for the URL to work each time. Add to that the fact that it’s also tedious to type, and the second benefit of TextExpander comes to the fore. I can be sure that I’m consistent just by typing pbie. At that point a big lump of HTML pops into my post and I’m ready to publish. Again, sync’ing is critical here, we all want that snippet to be shared and right.

Other Cool Stuff

There’s actually much more to TextExpander Touch. You can insert more dynamic text (for example including the current date or time), and whilst that’s great and increases the number of times you can create a snippet, it really is just icing…. for us the cake are those first two.

TextExpander touch also has a feature designed to help you use it with apps that don’t explicitly support it. You can create plain text notes within TextExpander Touch and then copy them over to the unsupported app for pasting. Whilst I can imagine that some may find this useful, for me the whole point of TextExpander Touch is that it makes things faster, and switching around just slows me down. I can imagine that it’s a habit I could get into, but right now I feel like there are more than enough benefits of TextExpander Touch without bothering with the notes. Your mileage may vary.

Conclusion

So is it worth it? If you create any kind of content using an app supported by TextExpander Touch (you can find a list on their site here) then just go buy it. Make sure every time you are aware of the fact that you are typing some phrase AGAIN, or correcting an auto-corrections AGAIN that you jump off, create a snippet, then jump back and stop stressing about it. I think that you’ll be very happy pretty soon.

As for unsupported apps, it feels a little less useful. However, I would like to note I didn’t try and force myself to use this capability so perhaps that’s why I didn’t find the benefit.

Overall, I think it’s a killer app, and as more and more apps support it the value will just keep getting higher and higher. Now it’s been in place for a month it’s become a transparent part of our posting process and whenever we set up a new device it’s murder until TextExpander Touch is installed and sync’d. Our recommendation: go get it, especially if you have one of the supported apps.

• What: One of the few tools that can genuinely claim to be a productivity enhancer on iOS. Learn more here
• Where: Get it on the app-store
• How-much: $4.99 gets you the universal app on the US iTunes store… I’m sure you can map this to your local currency!