How I use Typinator.
I type a lot during the day (like a lot, a lot). So having tools to make typing long code or common phrases faster to do is essential for making the most of my work time.
In this video, I’ll show you a cool tool called Typinator, which is one of my favorite programs for doing this. Typinator is a text replacement program that lets you create custom abbreviations for longer substitutions, allowing you to quickly type longer text or code with shorter keystrokes. It’s been super helpful for me, and I think you’ll enjoy it too!
Transcript
Hey! I'm going to show you how I use text replacement or how I use Typeinator. Typeinator is a text replacement program. Basically you type something and it's going to type something else for you. I'll just show you my favorite stuff and we'll go from there. First, I'll show you how it works so you have your abbreviation sets and these are all just things I made up. I'm going to go ahead and make one for The Productivity Shop. So, I'll go ahead to my Luke abbreviations. Actually, start a new one. New abbreviation set The Productivity Activity Shop. I'll do a plus sign here to add a new abbreviation. I'll type the abbreviation that I want, so the first thing that comes to mind and something that I'm not going to commonly type. So, I'll do maybe "The Productivity Shop tps," that might come up in a word an abbreviation. So, I'll do p shop. Whenever I do "p shop," The Productivity Shop will appear. Let's test it out. So, "p shop," BOOM! The Productivity Shop appears. Now, there's other programs that can do this Alfred, Snippets, A Text. Which is five bucks and I recommend text expander. I'll show you why particularly I like Typhonator. So along with, well this is probably with other programs too but let's say I want to do p shop and then today's date. You can do variables inside of the expansion. So, I'm going to go ahead and go to these three dots here. And then, I'm going to choose some of the available variables and maybe I'll do here and then comma month, comma the time zone. So, now when I go to my test document and I do "p shop," it's going to add the variable content inside. As well something really cool that I did for work recently. I have to go to a document with today's date but then I also have a document with last week's date. So, rather than figure out what the date was last week, I go ahead and do today's date minus, seven. Which is pretty cool. How it works is, I have documents called "rt0204." So, that'll be today's documents and then I'll want to go ahead and go seven days back. So, let's set it up how I have it on my work computer. So, I'm going to go ahead and make a new shortcut and call it "rtd." So, that's just what I use for work . And, then I do "rt" and then the current month and two numbers. So, month and then the current day and two numbers. So, if there's a single number, there's gonna be a zero. Okay, "rtd" and then it pulls up my shortcut but then if I'm going to go to last week's, I want to do minus seven. So, in Typinator. I'm going to do another one. I'm gonna do "rtl". So, "d" is for day and "l" is for last week. It's just whatever comes to my mind. I'm gonna do the same thing but, then before I'm gonna type, "bracket bracket day delta equals minus seven" and then when I go to my document, "rtl" it's gonna do last week. Pretty cool. I'm just thinking, let's do something let's, do something like 60 days ago. So I do "dt" for today's date in full form. So, "dt" let's try to see what happens when we do "dt" plus 60. So, I'm gonna, we'll just use this one for now. I'm gonna go ahead and do find "dt" and here it is. I'll put it here and then we'll do the "bracket bracket day delta plus" let's do "minus minus 60." Oh, this will be super cool if it works, so "rtl" and I'm not gonna guess if that's right but I guess it looks pretty right. That's pretty cool, um. And then another thing that I use text replacement for, is whenever I have to type complicated codes or terminal things or something where it's just like a lot of it's like a line of code. But, then I just need to change one thing, I use text replacement with input variables. I'll show you what that means. So, whenever I'm apple scripting, I use text replacement a lot to be faster. But anyway, usually I have to write "tell application quote google chrome to activate" and when I run this test script, Google Chrome will activate and come to the front. That's a lot of typing for me. So, what I did, was I created a text expansion shortcut. Where, it'll insert a variable for Google Chrome. So, what I did was I combined the first word "tell" and the first letter of the word "application" into "tella." So, whenever I type "tella" it'll go ahead and do my text replacement shortcut. So, I'll do "tella" and then a window will pop up and I have a little note saying, reminding me what's I need to type in. So, I'll type in Google Chrome and then, BOOM! You can see that it wrote a hint it put Google Chrome here and it wrote all of the code that I usually write. So, I'll try finder or I'll do another example like "tella Luke" if Luke was an app and you can see that it puts it in there. I'll show you how to set it up. So, I'll go to Typinator. I'll type in my code and you can see the code here. Let's go ahead and make our own from the beginning. So, I'll go ahead and just type out exactly what I want and then what you do is, you do "bracket bracket question mark" and then a variable name. So, this will just be what pops up in front of the dialog box. So, I'll do "which app" and then I'll do "bracket bracket" to close and everywhere where I want the input variable to appear, I'll just paste this code. You don't have to remember this code, it's available in the little drop down menu. So, I'll go ahead and update mine to say "which app" so now, when I go to Adam and I do "tella" it'll say "which app" you can see right here and then I can type my app. In order to find the input menu, we just go to the three dots and do input field. And then you can choose from the options here. I'll go ahead and do an example app and then if you want a default value you can do that. Usually, I don't because I like to keep it simple and you can see that it just does "bracket bracket question mark app". I prefer this over text expander. Text expander is very powerful as well. However, the code to do this is a little bit more complicated and yeah! Just a personal preference. I got Typinator from a free pack and I just been sticking with it. Another thing that I use text replacement for is for bookmarks. A lot of the times, I don't want to go to Chrome, go to my bookmarks or search for a certain thing and I just remember it in my head. So, what I use it for is my apple scripting key code website, not mine. "Keycodes" and it'll go ahead and paste key codes for you. So yeah, just a medium long video and why I use Typeinator and Text Expansion. If you have any questions you can email me at helloproductivityshop.co or you can join the Productivity Shop slack channel. Thanks for watching, see you later!
Hey! I'm going to show you how I use text replacement or how I use Typeinator. Typeinator is a text replacement program. Basically you type something and it's going to type something else for you. I'll just show you my favorite stuff and we'll go from there. First, I'll show you how it works so you have your abbreviation sets and these are all just things I made up. I'm going to go ahead and make one for The Productivity Shop. So, I'll go ahead to my Luke abbreviations. Actually, start a new one. New abbreviation set The Productivity Activity Shop. I'll do a plus sign here to add a new abbreviation. I'll type the abbreviation that I want, so the first thing that comes to mind and something that I'm not going to commonly type. So, I'll do maybe "The Productivity Shop tps," that might come up in a word an abbreviation. So, I'll do p shop. Whenever I do "p shop," The Productivity Shop will appear. Let's test it out. So, "p shop," BOOM! The Productivity Shop appears. Now, there's other programs that can do this Alfred, Snippets, A Text. Which is five bucks and I recommend text expander. I'll show you why particularly I like Typhonator. So along with, well this is probably with other programs too but let's say I want to do p shop and then today's date. You can do variables inside of the expansion. So, I'm going to go ahead and go to these three dots here. And then, I'm going to choose some of the available variables and maybe I'll do here and then comma month, comma the time zone. So, now when I go to my test document and I do "p shop," it's going to add the variable content inside. As well something really cool that I did for work recently. I have to go to a document with today's date but then I also have a document with last week's date. So, rather than figure out what the date was last week, I go ahead and do today's date minus, seven. Which is pretty cool. How it works is, I have documents called "rt0204." So, that'll be today's documents and then I'll want to go ahead and go seven days back. So, let's set it up how I have it on my work computer. So, I'm going to go ahead and make a new shortcut and call it "rtd." So, that's just what I use for work . And, then I do "rt" and then the current month and two numbers. So, month and then the current day and two numbers. So, if there's a single number, there's gonna be a zero. Okay, "rtd" and then it pulls up my shortcut but then if I'm going to go to last week's, I want to do minus seven. So, in Typinator. I'm going to do another one. I'm gonna do "rtl". So, "d" is for day and "l" is for last week. It's just whatever comes to my mind. I'm gonna do the same thing but, then before I'm gonna type, "bracket bracket day delta equals minus seven" and then when I go to my document, "rtl" it's gonna do last week. Pretty cool. I'm just thinking, let's do something let's, do something like 60 days ago. So I do "dt" for today's date in full form. So, "dt" let's try to see what happens when we do "dt" plus 60. So, I'm gonna, we'll just use this one for now. I'm gonna go ahead and do find "dt" and here it is. I'll put it here and then we'll do the "bracket bracket day delta plus" let's do "minus minus 60." Oh, this will be super cool if it works, so "rtl" and I'm not gonna guess if that's right but I guess it looks pretty right. That's pretty cool, um. And then another thing that I use text replacement for, is whenever I have to type complicated codes or terminal things or something where it's just like a lot of it's like a line of code. But, then I just need to change one thing, I use text replacement with input variables. I'll show you what that means. So, whenever I'm apple scripting, I use text replacement a lot to be faster. But anyway, usually I have to write "tell application quote google chrome to activate" and when I run this test script, Google Chrome will activate and come to the front. That's a lot of typing for me. So, what I did, was I created a text expansion shortcut. Where, it'll insert a variable for Google Chrome. So, what I did was I combined the first word "tell" and the first letter of the word "application" into "tella." So, whenever I type "tella" it'll go ahead and do my text replacement shortcut. So, I'll do "tella" and then a window will pop up and I have a little note saying, reminding me what's I need to type in. So, I'll type in Google Chrome and then, BOOM! You can see that it wrote a hint it put Google Chrome here and it wrote all of the code that I usually write. So, I'll try finder or I'll do another example like "tella Luke" if Luke was an app and you can see that it puts it in there. I'll show you how to set it up. So, I'll go to Typinator. I'll type in my code and you can see the code here. Let's go ahead and make our own from the beginning. So, I'll go ahead and just type out exactly what I want and then what you do is, you do "bracket bracket question mark" and then a variable name. So, this will just be what pops up in front of the dialog box. So, I'll do "which app" and then I'll do "bracket bracket" to close and everywhere where I want the input variable to appear, I'll just paste this code. You don't have to remember this code, it's available in the little drop down menu. So, I'll go ahead and update mine to say "which app" so now, when I go to Adam and I do "tella" it'll say "which app" you can see right here and then I can type my app. In order to find the input menu, we just go to the three dots and do input field. And then you can choose from the options here. I'll go ahead and do an example app and then if you want a default value you can do that. Usually, I don't because I like to keep it simple and you can see that it just does "bracket bracket question mark app". I prefer this over text expander. Text expander is very powerful as well. However, the code to do this is a little bit more complicated and yeah! Just a personal preference. I got Typinator from a free pack and I just been sticking with it. Another thing that I use text replacement for is for bookmarks. A lot of the times, I don't want to go to Chrome, go to my bookmarks or search for a certain thing and I just remember it in my head. So, what I use it for is my apple scripting key code website, not mine. "Keycodes" and it'll go ahead and paste key codes for you. So yeah, just a medium long video and why I use Typeinator and Text Expansion. If you have any questions you can email me at helloproductivityshop.co or you can join the Productivity Shop slack channel. Thanks for watching, see you later!
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