TextExpander is an immensely useful tool on a Mac, saving your precious time and keystrokes. TextExpander quietly sits in your menubar and allows you to automatically enter frequently used text such as email signatures, postal addresses, URLs, Kaomojis, etc. by setting up abbreviations in the app that auto expand when entered. It’s a nifty tool if you spend your time typing a lot.
With the launch of iOS 8, TextExpander 3 for iOS has been released on the App Store today. It’s a completely new app that brings one very important feature to iOS. Previously, TextExpander snippets would only work in a 3rd-party if the app had integrated the TextExpander SDK in it. Several developers have already done this and over 60 apps supported TextExpander integration. However, iOS 8 gave TextExpander the option of releasing a custom keyboard, removing the necessity of the SDK integration. With TextExpander 3, you can now enable a system-wide keyboard and your snippets now work anywhere on iOS. You can sync snippets between your Mac and iOS devices via Dropbox. The keyboard also displays lowercase characters on the keyboard, something that the native keyboard doesn’t. In my testing, the keyboard lacked the polish that you’d expect from a keyboard, but for quickly expanding your snippets, it basically just worked. Of course, apps that do have the TextExpander SDK built into them can use its snippets using the native iOS keyboard itself.
TextExpander 3 is a Universal app and available for just $4.99 on the App Store.