

Trimmed 12-hour clock number (“2” for 2 am or 2 pm) Here’s a table with all the different macro options for displaying date & time information:Ģ digit 12-hour clock number (“02” for 2 am or 2 pm)Ģ digit 24-hour clock number (“02” for 2 am or “14” for 2 pm) You can use TextExpander to put in times and dates using different macros for different formatting options. One of the most practical applications of TextExpander’s macros is for date & time stamping. In the rest of this post, I’m going to break these macros down individually and there’s a video example associated with each. Here’s a list of the different types of macros that are available in TextExpander:

Keep in mind that you don’t need to actually memorize these macros as they can all be inserted using the Insert menu in TextExpander: The insert menu in TextExpander gives you access to the macros. There are several different types of macros in TextExpander.

This is where the macros we’re going to discuss in this post can really come in handy. However, many times the text you end up typing repeatedly has variable or optional content. And if this was the only way you ever used TextExpander, the app would still be well worth the $35 list price because it would still save you a ton of time. So at its core, TextExpander is exactly what it sounds like – a program that expands text. For example, I have an abbreviation “xplan” that expands to the snippet of one of my favorite quotes, “those who fail to plan, plan to fail”. For example, an abbreviation like “tyvm” might expand to the the snippet “thank you very much”. In TextExpander terms, a “snippet” is what is displayed when you type the assigned TextExpander abbreviation. Thanh recently wrote about the basic features of TextExpander and how he uses it on a daily basis, and in this post I want to dive in a little deeper by showing you how you can use the different macro types that are available in TextExpander to create your own (and more complex) “snippets”. TextExpander is just one of several text expansion apps available for Mac, but amongst Mac nerds that I respect, TextExpander is widely considered the most popular and the most powerful. TextExpander is a text expansion app for Mac created by Smile Software.
