Can I assign a keyboard shortcut for text replacement?
Can I assign a keyboard shortcut for text replacement?
MacBook Air 15″, macOS 14.6
Question marked as
Text Replacement (Mac/iPhone/iPad) Mac -> System Settings -> Keyboard -> Text Replacement iPhone/iPad -> Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Text Replacement I create Text Replacement entries which I can easily insert into a reply (2,000 char max). ONLY UTF-8 plain text characters & emoji (no bold, italics, pictures, etc...) iCloud can sync Text Replacements with your other Apple devices. Short replacements I just use Replacement edit window. Long replacements are composed in TextEdit -> Format (menu) -> “Plain Text”. Then Copy & Paste into the Text Replacement “With” field. To avoid accidental replacement, most of my triggers have a leading comma. For example: • ,bluetooth - Explains how to reset Mac Bluetooth • ,safe - Explains how to boot Mac into Safe mode • teh - replace with "the" (yes I do typo replacements) • im - replace with "I'm" (contraction replacements) • ,carrier - replace with "https://www.apple.com/watch/cellular", useful in a browser An Apple Support Community trick (https://discussions.apple.com). If you select and Cut a URL and then Paste it right back, it will change into a clickable website description. If the URL is on its own line, you can triple click (iPhone/iPad it is a triple tap) to select the entire URL. If a reply needs a picture, I keep them in an easy to access Mac folder, or an iPhone/iPad Photos Album. I can search for triggers in the Mac Text Replacement dialog box, by just typing the trigger phrase. For example: ,safe will quickly find my entry on Safe mode. But the funny thing is, the entry I'm searching for is just below the bottom edge of the window, so I have to scroll up to see it. A bit annoying, but once you know this, it is handy way to quickly get to the trigger you want to update. NOTE: Text Replacement works most places, but there are exceptions. Mac Terminal for example, which annoys me, as my day job involves spending most of my time using a terminal emulator.
