We regularly welcome teams moving to Typinator from TextExpander. A common reason lately: their snippets sat in a vendor cloud, and for confidential work that turned into a problem. Typinator keeps your abbreviations on your Mac and syncs, if you want it, through a path your own IT controls. This guide walks you through the switch.
Import your TextExpander snippets
After installing Typinator, you will want to import all your TextExpander snippets.
To transfer your snippets from TextExpander 6 or newer, you first need to download your snippet groups from the TextExpander web site: Log in to your account, select Import/Export in the sidebar and switch to the Export tab. From here, you can download your snippet groups as CSV files. To import these files, you can either use Typinator's Import command (click the "Action" toolbar icon, then select "Import…" from the Sets submenu) or just drag the file from the Finder into Typinator's set list (the list to the left in the Typinator window).
If you are migrating from TextExpander 5 or older, import the file Settings.textexpandersettings (in some versions, the file is called Settings.textexpander) in ~/Library/Application Support/TextExpander within your home folder.
Quit TextExpander
Important: Quitting TextExpander is an essential step. When both TextExpander and Typinator are active, you may get unexpected results when both of them try to expand the same abbreviations at the same time. You should also make sure that you remove TextExpander from your login items, to avoid activation of TextExpander when you start up your computer the next time.
Enjoy Typinator
Differences between TextExpander and Typinator
Typinator's philosophy differs in some aspects from TextExpander's. For example, Typinator does not have "fill-ins" (it has powerful input forms and variables instead), it uses different (more flexible) techniques for scripts (AppleScript, JavaScript, etc.), and it does not make suggestions.
Typinator does not have dedicated options for capitalizing sentences and fixing DOuble CAps. Instead, Typinator provides predefined sets with regular expression patterns to achieve the same result.
In most cases, you will find that your imported sets (the "groups" from TextExpander) work similarly in Typinator, but you may need to get used to some of Typinator's more specific features. For example, Typinator does not have any special options for delimiters. Instead, it has a simple "whole word" checkbox that helps to type abbreviations naturally without needing to adjust technical details.
Where your data lives after the switch
After import, your abbreviations and sets are stored on your Mac. Expansion runs on the device. If you want to share sets across a team, you choose the channel: iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, WebDAV, a NAS, or a folder inside your own network. ergonis runs no snippet server, so template content stays on infrastructure you control.
Teams in legal, government, healthcare, and financial services switch for exactly this reason. ergonis is an EU company, ISO 27001 certified at the company level, and GDPR compliant.
Special features
Once you are up and running with Typinator, you may want to check out some of the more advanced features, that are not available in TextExpander. Among these features are
- powerful regular expression sets for replacing complex patterns,
- built-in functions for text processing in expansions,
- HTML expansions for advanced formatting options in mail clients,
- includable text files and pictures,
- calculations,
- powerful date and time functions,
- and many more.
Licensing for teams
For professional and team use, Typinator Business is a per-user annual subscription. It includes central license administration, VAT invoicing, the iOS companion app, and ongoing updates. For larger rollouts, Enterprise is available on request. Private single users can pick the plan that fits on the pricing page.
Try before buy
Before you pay for Typinator, we invite you to try it for free. We distribute every software on a "try before you buy" basis. First download and install Typinator and test it for a while. Then, if you are satisfied (we are confident that you will be), visit our online store to purchase a license key.
Switching a team?
Tell us your seat count and we help you set up licensing and shared sets.