Switching from TextExpander to iOS 7 Text Shortcuts

I’ve been using TextExpander for a few years now, and love it to bits. Recently, it has been caught in a bit of an App Store battle, after using a hack of sorts to continue to work in iOS 7.  I’ve been waiting for my favourite apps to update and support the latest TextExpander work around, but now I’ve decided to switch to the free “Text Shortcuts”of iOS 7. Here’s why.   

Yesterday I was writing an email at work when this happened:

Screen Shot 2013-12-11 at 9.32.48 am

Très professionnel.

I had created that cute emoji shortcut for “traffic” on my iPhone the week before. It seems that Mavericks now syncs with iOS 7 Text Shortcuts over iCloud. Apple probably mentioned that somewhere, but I totally missed it until yesterday.

The cool thing is I can now cut and paste my TextExpander collection over to OS X/iOS nice and easily, via my Mac. There’s even an Applescript available to automate the process.

As a system wide feature, these shortcuts will be available everywhere, without a work around. It sucks, but TextExpander just can’t compete with that. And it’s free.

Thanks for the years of service, TextExpander.