If you don’t currently use a text expander or a clipboard manager then stop what your doing right now and go download both. The two I use currently are Flycut and aText but there are lots of great alternatives. I suggest trying a few but give them some time to learn. And then read on…
Clipboard Manager
A clipboard manager I think is mostly self explanatory once you’ve used one. In general I have difficulty working without one now.
Need to copy and paste 4 things in different applications? Compare: Copy, switch window, paste, switch window, … repeat 3 more times. vs Copy, copy, copy, copy, switch window, paste, paste, paste, paste.
More useful tricks:
- Auto-trimming whitespace from clipboard items.
- Search your clipboard history. Stop copying the same thing more then once! Even hours later.
- Clip things for later that you think you might need.
Text Expansion
Getting started with a text expansion application takes more getting used to, it’s not useful until you’ve built up a library of expansions.
The main things I use it for currently.
- Dates and times that I don’t want to write out.
- Bookmarks. I’ve mostly replaced bookmarks with text expansion. I think it’s just cleaner and faster. Also frees up a bit of browser space.
- Emojis.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
✅ ❌ 👍 ☕️ I keep all of the important ones close at hand.(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
⁉️ - Occasional shell commands
I got addicted to using a text expander when I worked in a support role for a few years during college. I had hundreds of job specific commands that included everything from shell scripting to writing entire emails. It was an absolute necessity that I couldn’t work without.