What is the scope of Apple Keyboard Text Replacement on a Mac?

The Keyboard preferences text replacement facility are short keyword strings of your choosing that when detected in a text-based application, are replaced by longer or more complicated strings (also of your choosing) that map to the original short string.

This has nothing to do with text messages or filesystem aliases, as the keyboard text replacement content is stored in a System preferences file as dictionary items. Text Replacement is simply a key/value dictionary lookup to apply the replacement string.

TextExpander, and most likely Typinator are more robust, and most likely include text formatting information.

The macOS Keyboard Text Replacement is really just text, without any text formatting included. It works in most situations, however, it does not work in a terminal emulator, such as macOS Terminal or iTerm2. But it does work most other places that I use it, such as for these discussions.apple.com forums, and for Slack. The 2 places I do the most posting and want some repeated canned answers.

BobHarris wrote: I like to create trigger phrases that begin with a comma, that get replaced with several paragraphs of replacement text.

Have you tried this and failed?

To ask Apple to make its system more robust, you can use

http://www.apple.com/feedback

MS Office has a separate system for this.

I think there are apps devoted to it, like TextExpander and Typinator.

I like to create trigger phrases that begin with a comma, that get replaced with several paragraphs of replacement text.

,ipv6

gives:

Try disabling IPv6:

Monterey: System Preferences -> Network -> Select Interface in left column -> Advanced (button) -> TCP/IP (tab) -> Configure IPv6 -> Link-local only

Ventura: System Settings -> Network -> Wi-Fi -> Details -> TCP/IP (tab) -> Configure IPv6 -> Link-Local Only

,carrier

gives:

hhttps://www.apple.com/watch/cellular

,nearby

gives:

hhttps://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205547

,safe

gives:

Boot macOS Safe Mode: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/start-up-your-mac-in-safe-mode-mh21245/mac

etc…