Quick Tip - Use the Built in Text Replacement Across Your Devices

For many of us, we dive straight into tools like KM or TextExpander, which are amazing in their own right. What we forget is how expansive and useful the built-in features are for our machines.

Prime example? The built-in text replacement features of both iOS and MacOS to save you time…

Quick Emoji’s:
;nerd -> :nerd_face:
;coffee -> :coffee:
;robot -> :robot:

Useful Info:
pem -> your personal email
bem -> your business email
‘##’ -> your phone number
;address -> your address

Fast Text Correction:
api -> API
amazon -> Amazon
sig -> your email signature
sg -> Sounds good!
teh -> the (just me?)

For those just getting started with this awesome obsession, it’s very easy to negate the quick and useful tools that exist in the Apple eco-system and how they - typically - work better than 3rd party tools given some constraints :nerd_face:

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To add to what @Dillon_Carter wrote, it’s worth noting that it’s possible to create multi-line/multi-paragraph text replacements on the Mac:

  1. Open System Preferences. Click on the “Keyboard” pane then click on the “Text” tab.
  2. Click the “+” button to add a new text replacement.
  3. Enter the shortcut text in the “Replace” column.
  4. Paste in some multi-line/multi-paragraph text into the “With” column.

These text replacements sync across all of your devices using iCloud and can be used (but not created/modified) on iOS/iPadOS devices.

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:exploding_head: I was trying to do this on my iPhone the other day and couldn’t get it to work. Now I know how. Thanks @timstringer!

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You’re very welcome, @Dillon_Carter. Good to hear this was helpful!

I posted a tribute to @timstringer and his multiline tip yesterday:

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Thanks for sharing, @drdrang. I feel honoured to have earned a mention on your blog!