Tips for naming Snippet abbreviations

TextExpander Talk
1

During our recent webinar, “5 Ways to Use TextExpander Like a Pro”, we weren’t the only ones sharing tips! A few TextExpander power users lit up the chat with their own clever tricks and time-savers. Since it’s too good to keep to ourselves, we wanted to share this one with you!

When it comes to creating Snippet Abbreviations, there are so many options. As a best practice, we always recommend making them:

  • Short
  • Easy to type
  • Memorable
  • Difficult to expand accidentally

Here are three helpful approaches to Snippet Abbreviations that power users shared during the webinar:

  1. Use ;1 through ;9 for your nine favorite or most-used Snippets.
  2. Double the first letter of every abbreviation, like nname or ddate.
  3. Start every abbreviation with a z because it’s not a commonly used letter, but is easy to access on the keyboard.

How do you name your Snippet abbreviations?

3 Likes
2

I had never thought of using ;1 through ;9 for most-important Snippets. It makes me think of how Command-1 through Command-9 brings up your first through nine tabs in Chrome, though it doesn’t help much when you have 20 tabs open per window like me.

3

I use a lot of # and // to precede my abbreviations.

I also try to select the first/significant letters of the action I’m making a snippet for to help me remember. In my Favorite Things post here about using TextExpander to make custom search engines I created an example showing a snippet for a HubSpot search.

Taking letters there that will jog my memory, I make the abbrevation #hbs

For Google Drive search, #gds

1 Like