With the hundreds and almost thousands of snippets that can be created with TextExpander, oftentimes oneProposed abbreviation expansion. Conflict alternatives. must resort to the inline search, which is very handy. However, inline search is not specific, and it searches many fields. It does also require additional steps.
The quickest way to use TextExpander is with keyboard abbreviations. After a certain time, you’ll see that frequently you may have two or more abbreviations of the exact same string, apparently by default. The first created abbreviation is what expands on trigger. I think this is completely unnecessary, and instead of expanding the singular default snippet, a popover view (very similar to the inline search) should be triggered to show the different snippets that match that specific abbreviation.
Please see the HTML link for a very nice demonstration of this feature. I would hope and recommend this to the development team. I’m sure that this can be a very easy addition to the current fantastic ability of TextExpander, which I use every single day.
Thank you for this. The screen recording and the keystroke count did a lot of work here, and the part I most want in front of our product team is the distinction you drew between this and inline search. Inline search matches label and content as well as abbreviation, which is the right behavior when you cannot remember a snippet and the wrong behavior when you have just typed an exact abbreviation and want only the snippets carrying it.
To set expectations on today’s behavior: when two snippets share an abbreviation, TextExpander expands the first match it finds and flags the pair as a conflict for you to resolve. Which snippet counts as “first” depends on group order, so it is not always predictable, and every remedy we can offer right now (rename, add a prefix, change case, disable a group) does treat the collision as a mistake rather than as something you might have chosen on purpose. In a library of a few thousand snippets, your point that collisions become inevitable is a fair one.
Your request is logged with our product team, including the demo and your suggested default of off with a per-group and per-snippet setting. That opt-in framing matters, because it leaves current expansion behavior untouched for people who depend on it. I cannot promise this gets built or give you a timeline, but it is in front of the people who decide what we work on, and a request that arrives with a working demonstration carries more weight than most.
Thank you SO MUCH for being the best part of TextExpander! I hope you have a great day!
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