Max Size of Text Replacement?

Question

nutnutwin Author

Level 1

9 points

Max Size of Text Replacement?

Hello everyone

I have been using Text Replacement on macOS and iPhone/iPad for a while,

Is there a limit to the number of entries in the Text Replacement Dictionary?

I open Keyboard⇒Text, Comm+A, and drag and drop everything onto desktop, before adding new entries to the dictionary

and found that

new entries were added
some existing ones vanished
the ｢Text Substitutions.plist｣file stays at 60010 lines, just 10K words

I wonder if there are some limit, like 10K entries?

If so, it would be so nice to let users know.

And I wonder if there are any workarounds

Thank you.

And sorry for my bad English

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.14

Posted on May 27, 2019 6:45 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Luis Sequeira1

Level 9

73,254 points

May 27, 2019 9:26 AM in response to nutnutwin

FWIW, I just artificially created 10000 text substitutions, the file comes out at 1.5MB and just over 70000 lines, and I can go there and add more and they all seem to work... Next, I will try 20000....

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Answer 2

May 27, 2019 10:02 AM in response to nutnutwin

As it turns out, the situation is a little stranger...

I had tried to create 20000 replacements, and only the last 10000 appeared and worked; but as I deleted those, the previous ones took their places! So they are not dropped, but it seems the exceding ones are kept on the "bench" and used as er,.... substitutes as others are removed.

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Answer 3

May 27, 2019 9:35 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Ok, I tried with 20000 and only the last 10000 remain. So it seems that may be the hard limit.

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Answer 4

May 27, 2019 9:07 AM in response to nutnutwin

That is good to know.

I tried it and I found out that it also works the other way around!

I opened the plist file in BBEdit, added a new shortcut (making sure to respect the structure of the xml), and dragged the file back. Lo and behold, the new shortcut works!

I don't have anywhere near that many shortcuts to check what the limits are, though.

Are you adding the new entries in System Preferences, or are you editing the xml as I did?

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