SmileOnMyMac Blog

TextExpander comes with an Internet Productivity suite that contains URL shortening snippets for a variety of services including bit.ly and is.gd. One of the newer services that I just discovered is called Clicky. Clicky is a Web analytics package that makes tracking how people are finding and using your Web sites a breeze. As part of the package they also offer a URL shortening service called clicky.me.

I’ve started using clicky.me for all my shortened URLs, and of course I need a TextExpander snippet to do that. The snippet takes any URL that is on your Mac’s clipboard and runs it through Clicky’s API to generate a shortened URL that you can paste into Twitter, Facebook or anywhere you so desire.

Note: You do need a Clicky user account, which is free for low volume users.

Read on for instructions on how to use this snippet.

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A few months ago we provided some instructions for how to setup Dropbox to sync with your TextExpander snippets.  The instructions have been used by many of you, but we have a better, less geeky way to accomplish the same thing going forward.

With the rise in popularity of “cloud computing,” third-party syncing services such as Dropbox have come on the scene, and with a bit of work, you can sync your snippets using it as a MobileMe alternative.

Dropbox is a free online storage service that synchronizes the data of a folder in your home directory with any other Mac you have the service installed on. When you make a change to a file or add something new to your Dropbox, their agent application will automatically push the changes to the cloud in the background and notify your other Macs of the change so they pull the update.

This works great for TextExpander because each time you create or modify a snippet, it saves the Settings.textexpander file that contains your settings and snippets. If we store this file in Dropbox, it will automatically update on each of your Macs. Dropbox can even deal with your Mac being offline temporarily.

To enable support for Dropbox, we’ll make use of Automator.  TextExpander 2.5.1 or later is required for proper synchronization with Dropbox. It’s a free update:

http://www.smileonmymac.com/textexpander/download.html

On your primary machine:

1. Disable TextExpander via the TextExpander prference pane.
   (Hold the Option key and click “Enable TextExpander” to kill TextExpander’s background process.)
2. Install Dropbox (https://www.getdropbox.com/)
3. Download Junecloud’s “Create Symbolic Link” automator action.
4. Drag the [Home Folder]/Library/Application Support/TextExpander folder to your Dropbox folder. Your TextExpander settings and snippets are now stored on Dropbox, but we still need to let TextExpander know about it.
5. Mount the Junecloud Automator Actions disk image you downloaded in step 3 and double-click the “Create Symbolic Link” automator action to install the action in Automator.
6. Jump into Automator and create a new Workflow.
7. Drag the TextExpander folder from your Dropbox into the Automator window’s drop zone.
8. Drag the “Create Symbolic Link” automator action from the Automator library.  Set it’s “Where:” value to be [Home Folder]/Library/Application Support/.
9. The Create Symlink window will appear. In this window set the location to [Home Folder]/Library/Application Support/.
10. Press “Run” in the Automator window.  You should hear a sound when the operation completes successfully.

The symlink will then redirect TextExpander to your Dropbox folder to grab the snippet information. You can confirm it by going to [Home Folder]/Library/Application Support and checking to see if the TextExpander folder is an alias now.

Repeat steps 1-10 on subsequent machines that you want to take advantage of syncing with your Dropbox instance of TextExpander.

Thanks to Michael Harahan for the Automator tip!

We’ve just added support to TextExpander 2.6 to specify on a per-group basis when abbreviations will expand. The choices are to expand after:

• Whitespace (the default / classic behavior)
• All characters except letters & numbers (punctuation, etc.)
• Any character

TextExpander user Miguel Brunell from Mexico helped develop an excellent use of the new “any character” option with snippets for Spanish accents. For example, one can type ~n for ñ or ‘i for í. If you type in Spanish, you may find this handy. For example, cigüeña is the word for “stork” in Spanish. Using TextExpander, you can type c-i-g-”-u-e-~-n-a and get: cigüeña!

You can download Miguel’s snippets here: Spanish Accents

Choose Add Group from File… from the + menu in TextExpander to add the downloaded snippet group. Divertanse!

Let’s say it’s your job to remind people to do something. Maybe you are the accounts receivable person, and you regularly need to remind people to pay you in 15 days. If you use TextExpander, your days of looking at the calendar and calculating that date are over!

We added date and time math capability to TextExpander 2.5. Now you can create a snippet that automatically inserts a date that is 15 days from today. Here’s how:

1) Create a new snippet by clicking on the plus (+) sign under your list of snippets on the left in the TextExpander Preference pane.

2) Click on the plus (+) sign under the snippet content pane on the right. Choose Date/Time Math > Add Day(s).

3) TextExpander inserts %@+1D into your snippet content pane. Change “1D” to “15D”.

4) Insert the date format you wish to appear, again using the plus (+) sign menu on the right. For example, if you want the date to appear in formatted “October 29, 2008″, insert the following:
 - Choose Date > Month > January. Add a space.
 - Choose Date > Day > 1. Add a comma and space.
 - Choose Date > Year > 2001  

5) When you are done, the snippet content should be: 
%@+15D%B %e, %Y

6) Give your snippet an abbreviation, such as “d15″ or “payupnow”.

TextExpander 2.5 is a free upgrade to registered users of TextExpander 1.x and earlier. You can download it here. Besides the date/time math, we’ve also added some new built-in snippet groups: Internet Productivity (which includes the AppleScripts we’ve posted here for URL shortening) and Symbols (for those who need to use symbols like copyright, trademark, euro, yen, infinity, etc.).