Expansions being added to the clipboard - Version 8.4.7 on Tahoe 26.6.1

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Hey

Myself and a quite few others are experiencing an issue with TE where the last snippet to be used is added to the clipboard, which is then included into the next expansion via clipboard function in snippet.

As an example, we’ll use TE twice in a row, once to expand a sentence “This is the example sentence” and again to expand a short paragraph with a URL “Hey, look at this example website www.example.text.expander.com - its a really useful site!”

If we use these back to back the second expansion paste the first when from the clipboard and the result will look like “Hey, look at this example website This is the example sentence - its a really useful site!”

It only began happening in the last few days, (first reported on the 14th) is anyone else having this issue? if so, have you fixed it? and how?

So far we’ve tried

  • update to latest version
  • fresh reinstall
  • toggle off then on the TE option in the mac accessibility settings

Any help will be much appreciated

Thank you!

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2

Hello @AlfieCarry,

I hope the day is treating you well.

Thank you for the detailed write up, the back to back example made this much easier to pin down.

What you are seeing is not the clipboard macro misbehaving. It is our clipboard restore being skipped. When TextExpander expands a snippet on macOS it briefly puts the snippet content on your clipboard, pastes it, then puts your original content back. Before restoring, it checks whether the clipboard still looks like what it placed there. If something else has touched the clipboard in that split second, TextExpander decides it is not safe to overwrite and leaves it alone. The side effect is that your snippet text stays on the clipboard, so the next snippet that uses the clipboard macro picks that up instead of what you copied.

There is a setting that tells TextExpander to restore regardless. To turn it on:

  1. Open Script Editor (Applications, Utilities).
  2. Paste this in:
tell application "TextExpander"
    set restore clipboard regardless to true
end tell
  1. Click the run button.

That is it, no restart needed. Try your two snippets back to back again. If you ever want to undo it, run the same script with false instead of true.

This resolved an identical case for us, so I am fairly confident it will sort you out. If it does, I would still like to work out why this started for several of you at once, because that part is not normal. Could you let me know:

  1. Your macOS version and your TextExpander version (TextExpander menu, About TextExpander, including the build number in parentheses).
  2. Which app you are expanding into when it happens.
  3. Whether you run a clipboard manager or launcher such as Raycast, Alfred, Paste, or Maccy, and whether any of them updated recently.
  4. Whether Preferences, Expansion, “Restore clipboard after expansion” is checked.

If you would rather not post version details publicly, email support@textexpander.com and reference this thread. I can also walk you through pulling a debug log, which will confirm the diagnosis outright.

Thanks for flagging it, and apologies for the noise it has put into your work.

All the best,
-Nick

3

Hey Nick

Thank you for the reply and fix, this seems to have sorted it for me. I’ve passed this onto the others as well to see if solves their issues too. :crossed_fingers:

Thank you for the offer of continued support as well, its hugely appreciated. Ill gather the data and pop through an email in the week.

Have a good weekend!