This chapter tells you how to set up OS X services to enable the snippet creation and editing commands on the TextExpander quick-access menu, it explains how those commands work, and it shows you how to set up hotkeys so you can use those commands—and others—without reaching for your mouse or trackpad at all.

Set Up Your Services

Pardon me while I make a brief excursion into OS X geekery. Trust me, I’ll be brief, and you don’t have to understand why you need to do what I’m going to tell you what to do in this short section. In fact, you can skip the next paragraph of background information if it makes your head spin: just follow the steps that follow it, and all will be well.

TextExpander’s quick-access menu provides commands you can choose to create new snippets, including Create Snippet from Selection. This command creates a snippet from the text that you have selected in another application, such as a phrase you have selected in a word processor, or a passage you have selected on a Web page. TextExpander uses an OS X system service to communicate between the application in which you have selected the text and TextExpander’s snippet creation feature. TextExpander installs this system service the first time you run TextExpander. However, before you can use the Create Snippet from Selection command, you must enable the service; while TextExpander can install the service, it can’t enable it on its own.