Remember that old saying that humans only use 10 percent of their brains? If that's true, we must be using even less of our Macs' brains. We wind up typing the same things over and over—your name and address in a form, your email address, directions to your house, your phone number, your preferred email sign-off—when we should let our Mac handle it instead. That's where Rocket Typist comes in.
How do you save and recall commonly used text clips?
Rocket Typist is a new Mac app that lets you save snippets of text that will expand when you type a shortcut. If you already use the wonderful TextExpander app by Smile Software, this probably sounds familiar, and it should.
Well, Rocket Typist is a standalone product, it stores all your snippets locally, and it was just added to Setapp, giving you even more value for your Setapp subscription. We think you're going to love how much time it'll save you.
Why you need Rocket Typist
For programmers, Rocket Typing saves you from typing the same code snippets over and over. Parallels desktop crack. With Rocket Typing, there's no need to change your typing habits! Just enter your abbreviations, and Rocket Typing automatically expands them when you hit delimiter characters such as space, tab or enter.
Everyone has to type things, and most of us wind up typing a lot of the same things again and again. Your name, your phone number, your address, email, but that's only scratching the surface. You could keep snippets for the answers to questions you get a lot, the template of a report you have to compile every week, code snippets you use frequently, words you're constantly misspelling, or for anything you find yourself copying-and-pasting a lot.
- Rocket Typist - 2.0 - Expand typed abbreviations. By Kecodoc 31 0. Rocket Typist is a modern Mac application, created with simplicity in mind. During a regular day.
- Rocket Typist is a text expansion app that eliminates those boring tasks by providing you a simple database where you can save your most commonly used phrases. You can paste them into any document using a drop down menu, or set them to appear automatically when you type an abbreviation.
Think of Rocket Typist like a permanent clipboard, and use text expansion in your daily workflow - save your frequently used texts and templates to boost your productivity.
What about security? This text expander stores all your snippets locally, so nothing is sent up to the cloud. That means you could use it to store sensitive info that's hard to remember, like your children's social security numbers—but if you do, you should also keep your Mac encrypted with FileVault and be sure to use a strong passcode. (If you use a password manager like 1Password, that's an even better place to store secure info like that, since security is a password manager's main mission.)
Four ways to use this text expansion app
Rocket Typist hangs out in your menubar, and it's actually quite flexible in how you can use it.
Store snippets to access manually.
You can simply store text snippets in Rocket Typist's Snippet Editor, and access them manually by clicking the rocket icon in the menubar.
There, you can search for your snippet, and click it to copy it your clipboard. Then you can paste it anywhere you like.
You can also find snippets with Spotlight, or set up a key command to open the menubar menu in the Preferences.
Auto-paste snippets.
If you'd like those copied snippets to auto-paste into your document as soon as they hit your clipboard, head to the Preferences, click the Auto-Paste tab, and check the box to Enable Auto-Paste. The sound is optional.
Set abbreviations.
The typing shortcut option makes Rocket Typist tremendously useful. Instead of having to search for and select your snippet manually, you can create a text expansion rule. Then you can just type the abbreviation, and the snippet will appear automatically.
To turn this on, head to the Preferences, click the Abbreviations tab, and check the box to Enable Abbreviations. After you type an abbreviation, you need to hit one more key to make it expand to the full snippet, and you can choose the space bar, Tab key, or Return.
This feature allows you to automatically fill frequently used long sentences with short abbreviations or keyboard shortcuts.
Exclude applications.
For your abbreviations, you should pick a string that would never appear naturally in a word. I like to just add an X to the end, so for example, to type my address, I use the abbreviation addx.
But if I found myself accidentally typing that in another application (maybe data entry, or when playing a game), Rocket Typist lets you exclude applications from your abbreviations in Preferences > Abbreviations.
How to make your text snippets smarter
Open the Snippet Editor, and when you're composing a new snippet, you can click the little magic wand button at the top-right for more options. They let you set up more complex snippets that you can use as templates for email replies, reports, and more.
Date and time. You can add a placeholder for the date and time, and then format exactly how you want it to look. Then when you expand that snippet, the current date and time are filled in just how you like them. Primomusic pro 1 7 0.
Placeholder text. You can also have placeholder text, which you're then prompted to replace when you expand the snippet. For example, you could set up a snippet as a reply to an email, keeping the opening and closing chit-chat the same, and just inserting some custom text into the body to answer the person's real question.
Clipboard content. Maybe you get a lot of emails that require you to look something up. You'd probably copy the info, and then paste it into a reply, right? Rocket Typist lets you save the template for that reply as a snippet, and then use the Clipboard Content option to auto-paste in whatever is currently on the clipboard.
Images. Your snippets can even contain images, so your email signature could have your company's logo, or you could just keep a recent image of your kids handy to send to people who ask after them. Just drag images into the Snippet Editor.
Give Rocket Typist a spin, and we think you'll be impressed with how much time and effort it can save you.
Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.
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If you spend a lot of time at your computer it probably means you are going to be doing a lot of typing. That will be the case if you use the computer to work, write letters, documents, emails, articles or simply spend time on forums or social networks. Whether you realize it or not, you'll very likely be typing in the same things like long words or common phrases, names, addresses or email signatures over and over again. That all takes time that could be saved if you shorten the process.
It's possible to use something like the Clipboard to paste in the same text over and over, but the Windows Clipboard has it's limit of pasting a single copied item at a time. Users of Microsoft Word will likely know about the Autocorrect function that can take an abbreviation or short string and replace it with another word or short phrase. While that works in Word it doesn't help when you want to use something similar in other applications or web browsers.
As Windows doesn't have the ability to expand words or strings into phrases a third party application will be needed. We've previously written about how to insert words or phrases with hotkeys, but here we list 5 free tools that can quickly or automatically expand a short typed string into a longer string. All programs were tested in Windows 7 and 10 64-bit.
1. PhraseExpressPhraseExpress is probably the most feature rich and comprehensive free text replacement tool around today. Depending on your needs it may be exactly what you want or you might prefer to use something smaller and simpler. There's an add-on system where phrase files can be downloaded and imported, such as sample phrases, special functions, English contractions, autocorrect words, chat acronyms and sample macros. Even Autotext and Autocorrect From Word and emails from Outlook can be imported. PhraseExpress has both portable and setup installer versions.
Adding a phrase can be done a couple of ways, either open the main window and press the Phrase button in the ribbon toolbar, or highlight a phrase in some text and press Ctrl+Alt+C. The second method is simpler and quicker because you only need to supply the abbreviation autotext. The first method is more powerful as the replacement text can include a massive array of content. It includes text formatting, images, URLs, tables, date and time, automation such as create email or run program, text operations, clipboard operations and mouse/keyboard functions.
After typing the autotext shortcut the phrase content can be inserted immediately, after a delimiter such as Enter, Space or Tab is pressed, in a manual confirm popup menu (press Tab to accept), with a predefined hotkey or SmartComplete suggests as you type. PhraseExpress also has a clipboard cache that stores clipboard data allowing you to select it from a menu, and an option to include or exclude individual phrases or whole phrase libraries in specific programs. Memory usage is a touch high at around 30-40MB.
Download PhraseExpress
2. TyperTask
TyperTask is from the same developer as the popular TinyTask macro creation tool. It's a plain no frills program that does the task at hand with a few more interesting features besides. These include entering text snippets via keyboard shortcut, launching programs/websites, creating list menus and emulating keyboard keys/mouse actions. It can do all that from a portable executable of only 56KB and consuming only 1-2MB of RAM in the background.
As it packs several features into a tiny package that does also make TyperTask a touch more difficult to setup. This is because the settings have to be configured manually in a user interface that closely resembles Notepad. Luckily, creating a simple text expansion is easy. Enter the abbreviation on a new line, add an equals (=), then add the expanded text snippet. For a line break add {enter} into the text. Additional keyboard keys and abbreviations for date and time can also be used.
Rocket Typist 1 3 – Expand Typed Abbreviations Online Game
Go to File > Save and minimize TyperTask to the tray. An informative Readme file is available for the more advanced uses of the program and how best to use text snippets. Lrtimelapse pro 4 0 download free. How to make apple pages into pdf. Go to Help > Help Reference to open it.
Download TyperTask
3. WordExpander
WordExpander is by Bartels Media, the people behind Sharemouse, and advertised as a free alternative to the shareware and quite expensive PhraseExpander. The sims 4 questions. The program is a traditional text replacement tool and not stuffed with features like PhraseExpress, which is good if that's all you want. There are two modes of operation (called Libraries) in WordExpander, phrase replacement shortcuts or autocorrection.
For a Phrase you supply a shortcut word and then add the snippet or block of text to replace it with. When you type the shortcut a menu will popup with one or more snippets that are configured for that shortcut. Press the default qualifier key Shift to insert the replacement text. Autocorrection is different because it's meant for auto correcting misspelled words but can also be used for phrases or sentences. Enter the Typo (shortcut phrase) and replace with text in the Correction box. As soon as you enter the typo text and press space it will automatically be replaced.
WordExpander has some downloadable phrase libraries but they're all medical related for some reason. There is an English autocorrect file which has over 4,100 word corrections. Download it then use the Import Library function to import the text file into the program. WordExpander was a bit erratic on memory usage, averaging anywhere between 20MB and 60MB.
Download WordExpander
4. Texter
Texter was developed by an editor working at Lifehacker and created in the AutoHotKey scripting language. Sadly Texter is not in active development and the last version was from back in 2007. That's not to say it doesn't work on newer operating systems because we tested it in Windows 10 and it worked OK. Any found issues or bugs are never going to get fixed though. Both setup installer and portable versions are available, as is the AutoHotKey source code if you want to have a look.
After launching Texter and it's sitting in the tray press Ctrl+Shift+H to open the create hotstring window. Alternatively double click the tray icon and press the plus button. Enter the hotstring into the small box which is the abbreviation text, then enter the replacement text into the large box. A new line here will also insert the text as a new line in the software. The Trigger is how you would like the text to be expanded, either after you press Enter, Tab, Space or instantly after the hotstring has been typed. Press OK when done and test out your new hotstring.
For a Phrase you supply a shortcut word and then add the snippet or block of text to replace it with. When you type the shortcut a menu will popup with one or more snippets that are configured for that shortcut. Press the default qualifier key Shift to insert the replacement text. Autocorrection is different because it's meant for auto correcting misspelled words but can also be used for phrases or sentences. Enter the Typo (shortcut phrase) and replace with text in the Correction box. As soon as you enter the typo text and press space it will automatically be replaced.
WordExpander has some downloadable phrase libraries but they're all medical related for some reason. There is an English autocorrect file which has over 4,100 word corrections. Download it then use the Import Library function to import the text file into the program. WordExpander was a bit erratic on memory usage, averaging anywhere between 20MB and 60MB.
Download WordExpander
4. Texter
Texter was developed by an editor working at Lifehacker and created in the AutoHotKey scripting language. Sadly Texter is not in active development and the last version was from back in 2007. That's not to say it doesn't work on newer operating systems because we tested it in Windows 10 and it worked OK. Any found issues or bugs are never going to get fixed though. Both setup installer and portable versions are available, as is the AutoHotKey source code if you want to have a look.
After launching Texter and it's sitting in the tray press Ctrl+Shift+H to open the create hotstring window. Alternatively double click the tray icon and press the plus button. Enter the hotstring into the small box which is the abbreviation text, then enter the replacement text into the large box. A new line here will also insert the text as a new line in the software. The Trigger is how you would like the text to be expanded, either after you press Enter, Tab, Space or instantly after the hotstring has been typed. Press OK when done and test out your new hotstring.
To edit or delete the hotstrings open the management window by double clicking the tray icon or pressing Ctrl+Shift+M. Texter also has a basic scripting mode which can add keystrokes to the text, change the Text drop down to Script to enable that function. More help can be found on the Lifehacker page for the program. Texter uses about 4MB of memory sitting in the tray
Download Texter
5. ProKeys (Google Chrome Extension)
If you only want to use text expanding capabilities within your web browser to fill online forms or forum posts etc, it makes sense to use a browser extension. That way only the browser will be affected and other software on the computer will not, and nothing will be running in the background while the browser is closed. ProKeys is a Chrome extension that can do the job.
The extension works much like the other tools by adding a keyword or phrase and then entering the expanded text to replace it with. Text replacement is not automatic and you press a hotkey after typing the abbreviated word to expand it, the default is Shift+Space but can be changed. ProKeys also has an auto character pair insert option (if you type a left bracket it will add a right bracket and place the cursor in between them) and an exclusion list where specific websites can be added that ProKeys will ignore.
Download ProKeys Chrome Extension
We did look at some other extensions for both Chrome and Firefox, such as Auto Text Expander and Text Complete, but found they didn't work very well or never worked at all. One issue with using an extension is it will use more memory than the lighter tools listed here. If your system is quite old or its memory is limited it might be better to use something like Texter or TyperTask instead.
You might also like:
6 Tools To Insert Text or Commands With Keyboard Shortcuts5 Free Tools to Search and Replace a Word or Phrase Across Multiple Text Files5 Free Tools to Paste Copied Texts Without Formatting7 Ways to Copy Text or Error Messages from WindowsScan and Convert Images to Text with OCR, Optical Character RecognitionIt appears that TyperTask is no longer on the vtaskstudio.com web site. It available for download from CNet.com and other download web sites. There is also a Typer Task program on SourceForge.net, but it is not clear if this is the same program.
ReplyThanks for the report, we've changed the download link to Softpedia. The tool at Sourceforge is different and never really got off the ground by the look of it.
ReplyMy attempts to use TyperTask have been somewhat disappointing. It seems to work very nicely, but the help information included with TyperTask says that there is an additional online help file with a complete list 'bracket codes' that allow you to use non-alphanumeric keys on the keyboard. TyperTask is handicapped without this additional information.
It appears that all references to TyperTask have been purged from the vTaskStudio,com web site. They have shut down their support forum and they say that they don't respond to requests for help via E-mail or phone.
If someone has saved a copy of the online help file or the 'bracket codes', it would be a great service to the user community if they could post that information somewhere online. Perhaps someone could find the unknown bracket codes by examining the executable file and looking for ASCII strings that correspond to the known bracket codes.
ReplyThe help file says the extra bracket codes are contained within the help files of vTask Studio. Those files are still online so you will have to search through and find what you are looking for. The below help page might be of some use.
vtaskstudio.com/help/lookup.htm#keys
It's a shame when a developer completely disowns its own software. TinyTask and WhatChanged are other free tools we have mentioned before that have been erased from their website.
ReplyI am an advanced user of this program and I can highly recommend the Pro version for business use. I use it every day and consider it indispensable. To use the advanced features you do need to sit down and read the user manual, but once you do you will be amazed at what it can do and how much time it can save you? Texter is good, but PE offers a whole new level of customization and features that become hard to live without.
ReplyRocket Typist 1 3 – Expand Typed Abbreviations Online Dictionary
thanks ray….its nice to see you post regularly these days… Date and time.
ReplyRocket Typist 1 3 – Expand Typed Abbreviations Online Quiz
I use Texter -simple and good
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