Expansion Mode and Delimiters
Hi everyone, and welcome to the next part in our series on TextExpander preferences. Today, we’re going to look at Expansion Mode, the different options there, as well as delimiters.
By default, TextExpander is going to be set to Immediately expand a Snippet whenever you type the Abbreviation.
To give a quick example of this, I have a snippet that’s just the letters “p” and “h”. As soon as I type them, you will hear a little pop sound, it immediately expands the abbreviation out to the full Snippet. In this case, it’s just a pretend phone number here.
Exploring Delimiters
If we change our expansion mode from “Immediately when typed” to “At delimiter (Keep delimiter)” and “At delimiter, (abandon delimiter)”
A delimiter is going to prevent an Abbreviation from expanding unless a specific key is entered in directly after typing the abbreviation.
With this setting of Keep delimiter, we can choose what you’d like to use as a delimiter. We have different keys and characters that can be used for a delimiter. For right now, we’re going to turn on Space ****(this would just be the spacebar) as a delimiter.
Now, if I type out “ph”, nothing happens until I hit the space key. The ‘ph’ Snippet expands out, and has that extra space at the end of the expanded Snippet. That may or may not always be the desired outcome you’re looking for.
Abandoning the Delimiter
What I find can also be useful is changing our delimiter here (and you can have multiples). Let’s add a semicolon, and we’ll change the option under Expansion Mode to “At delimiter (abandon delimiter)”
What this is going to do is, when I type out “ph” and hit the spacebar, it expands and then removes that extra space at the end. We can also visually see this easier by using “ph” and the semicolon. As soon as I hit the semicolon, it immediately expands out and removes it.
Compared to the “Keep delimiter” option if I type “ph” and then hit the semicolon, you can see that just like the one up here (where we have the spacebar turned on as well as the semicolon), the delimiter stays at the end of the expanded Snippet.
Again, by default, most people typically use “Immediately when typed”. However, adding delimiters can open up more options to give you direct control over when specific snippets do and don’t expand. That way you don’t end up accidentally triggering an expansion unexpectedly.
Use Case Example:
A support agent writes hundreds of emails per day and wants to use short Abbreviations like:
- sig → their email signature
- ref → a refund policy explanation
- thanks → a thank-you message
However, words like “ref” may appear naturally while typing (for example, “reference” or “refresh”), and they don’t want TextExpander to accidentally expand the Snippet.
They configure a Delimiter such as a semicolon (;), so their workflow becomes:
- Type sig; → expands to their full email signature
- Type ref; → expands to a complete refund response
- Type thanks; → expands to a polished thank-you message
This lets them:
- Use very short, easy-to-remember abbreviations
- Avoid conflicts with normal words
- Create a consistent “command language” for TextExpander that only expands when intentionally triggered.
I’d love to hear how you use Delimiters with TextExpander, and why they are helpful to your workflow!
For a video walkthrough, please click here.