Using Mac Text Replacements

Text replacements are the ultimate typing productivity tool. You can add to a list of short special words that will then expand into longer phrases as you type. Learn how to add, edit and delete Text Replacements and lots of tips and tricks like how to import and export them.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to use text replacement on your Mac. 
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.
Text replacements are one of the most powerful productivity tools on your Mac and they are built right in. You can use text replacements to save time if you need to type the same text over and over again in your daily work. You can also use them to automatically correct spelling or to type hard to find characters. So in macOS Ventura you'll find text replacements in System Settings. Then go down to Keyboard. Then look for the button Text Replacements. If you are using macOS Monterey or before you've got to go into System Preferences, Keyboard, and then look for Text. 
So text replacements is a list of things to replace and what to replace them with. So you'll probably find some default ones there. Like, for instance, OMW for On My Way. So use that text replacement, say in the Messages App. You would simply what was on the left, the O M W part and you can see how it even shows you that it is going to replace it with On My Way if you just press Space or Return or some other word divider. So I'll press Space here and you'll see it replace OMW with the replacement text. 
Now you can create your own very easily. Click the Plus button at the bottom left hand corner of the Text Replacements List. Then you have Replace and With. So in replace use the text that you would want to type to trigger this. So let's do TYVM. I'll put in the With section Thank You Very Much. Then press Add. Now you can see it appear here in the list. Now let's say you're in the Mail App and you want to type thank you very much. Instead of typing all those characters you would just type TYVM, what was on the left. You'll see it indicate there that it is going to replace it. Then you just type whatever word divider comes next. In this case maybe a period and you could see how it puts the text there. So it makes it easier and faster to type that phrase every time. 
Now you can use it for much longer phrases than this. I'm going to click the Plus button here and add a new one. Now since the text that you want to replace should be something unique. Something you wouldn't normally type by accident it could be useful to use symbols. Like for instance maybe start with an exclamation point since it is easy to type that on your keyboard and then type something you can easily remember. I'm going to do Reply1. Reply 1 maybe something I need to type in an email message all the time. So in the With area here I'm going to type out a long message or in this case I've just copied it from a previous use. I'm going to Paste it in here. It is a very long piece of text here. It doesn't matter because it can take any length there. Even multiple paragraphs. Now I'm going to click Add. I'll see it appear here in the list. Now if I want to type the reply I just type exclamation point and then Reply1. I'm going to press Return and I get this entire thing. It's much easier to type just those seven characters than all of this every time. 
Another way you can use text replacement is to add a word that you commonly misspell to make sure you get it right every time. So I'm going to click the Plus button here and I'm going to type the misspelling right there and type the correct spelling right here. Then when I add that now I get it right here and every time I type it wrong it will replace it with the right thing whether or not I have auto spell correct turned on or not. 
Another thing you can use this for is to type hard to find characters. So, for instance, lets say you want to use exclamation point and congrats and every time you type that you're going to replace it with a special set of emoji characters. So I'm going to do Control Command Space for the fn key and e and then find some emoji to use. So I'll search for party, I'll add this. I'll do it again and then I'll add this. Do it again and add this. So now I've got these three emoji characters here and now in any app where I type, I can type Congrats and it will automatically insert those emoji characters. 
One problem you may run into is that you always have to insert some sort of word separator, like a space, in order to trigger the text replacement. That can be inconvenient if you don't want that extra space to be there. So there are some ways around it. One thing you can do is you can type and then find the suggestion below and then click it and it will insert it there without you needing to type that extra character and not inserting anything afterwards. You can also just use the Down Arrow key to go down and select that and then return and then it will insert it without adding another character. Or you can type the replacement and then just press Space and get in the habit of pressing the delete afterwards. It's just one more press on the keyboard. 
Now you can always go back into System Settings and then go to this list and update any text replacement you want. Just select one and then if you click again on the text on either side you can edit it or Copy and Paste something new in there. You could also, of course, select one and then press the Minus button to remove it. You could also select multiple ones by holding down the Command key or the Shift key to select a range. Then use the Minus button to remove them all. 
Now even if you knew all of that and have already been using text replacements I bet you didn't know this. You can export and import text replacements. So let's say you've created a whole bunch of them and you want to save them just to make sure that you kind of have a backup of those. You can select them using the Command Key or Shift Key and then drag them out and into the Finder, into a folder or here onto the Desktop. You're going to get a P list file which is a special type of text file. If we actually drag that into TextEdit we could take a look at this file here. It clearly shows that there is a phrase, this, and the shortcut to it is this. You could see I've got this one here with the shortcut of this. So you could actually just edit this text file and even copy and paste to add new ones. So I'll replace this one with just the word Test and exclamation point T and I'll save this. Now let's delete these two so those are missing and guess what? I can take this P list and I can drag it into this list and it will add back those and even the one I manually created by editing the text. Of course I had to be very careful when editing the text in here because a simple mistake, like changing one of these tags, could have made the whole thing unreadable. So this is a good way to backup your text replacements and save them somewhere. This is also a good way to Share them. Say if you create a whole list of work related text replacements you could export them this way and give them to somebody else so they can import them into their text replacements. Also it could be a good way to bulk Add them by editing the text file manually if you're up for it. 
Of course you can use these text replacements almost anywhere. Here I am in TextEdit and you could use them there. Here I am in Pages. Here I am in a form in Safari. Here I am in Notes. They even work in most third party apps although notably it doesn't work in Microsoft Word. Word has its own text replacement feature in the AutoCorrect window. There's a list there that you can use and it works the same way. But unfortunately it is going to have to be a separate list from the text replacements in System Settings. 
Here are some other tips. If you find that text replacements aren't working like that then check in the Edit Menu for the app you are using. Look under Substitution. If you find text replacement make sure that it is checked. Now that you've got that turned on you can see it works again. Note that Pages has its own set of text replacements. If you go to Pages, Settings, and you go to AutoCorrection you'll see a separate list of replacements right here. You can turn this On and add text replacements that only work in Pages. You can see this list is different than the one in System Settings. 
So if you're really into increasing productivity or maybe just typing a little less you really want to look into using text replacements on your Mac. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 9 Responses to “Using Mac Text Replacements”

Eric

2 years ago

Note that when dragging the file from the desktop back to text replacement you can't do that if stage manager is active.

Margaret

Hi Gary, can the text replacements be shared between MacBook and iPad?

Gary Rosenzweig

Margaret: Yes. That happens automatically via iCloud.

Thanks Gary, this is partly off-topic, but is connected as the text replacement will be useful to help with declining vision. I looked to find out where the ‘globe’ key is and found how easy it is to dictate which I hadn’t started to do. However it doesn’t seem to be working with Pages, unless I have missed something.

Now my request, please, is for a tutorial about the 10 best (or more) aids for people with low vision.I don’t know how I would manage without your videos. Thanks again. Margaret

Jasper

As well as MS Word, MS Outlook won’t support text replacement. I assume it’s a problem with all non-native apps.

I also use ‘@x’ for different email addresses, command keys (⌘, ⌥, etc, to remember shortcuts), and maths formulae that include Greek letters, for my job. Really useful.

Jasper: It works in most non-Apple apps. I use it in non-Apple apps all the time. Microsoft just goes its own with with its own text replacements in its apps.

Elle

If I try editing an existing text replacement, it doesn't "save". In the keyboard shortcuts it shows the new text, but when using the shortcut, the old text is what is replaced. My only workaround is deleting and adding a new one and I do this daily with a shortcut I use for dates. Do you know of any fixes?

Elle: I've never had that problem, not sure what would cause it. But if you want to insert the date somewhere, there are better ways to do it. You could use a Shortcut (as in the Shortcuts app) or it can be done with my free ClipTools app: https://macmost.com/cliptools

Lucian

1 year ago

Elle: It works after you quit the System Settings.

Comments Closed.

Using Mac Text Replacements

Comments: 9 Responses to “Using Mac Text Replacements”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information