I Switched from TextExpander After 8 Years. Here's What Happened.

I started using TextExpander in 2018. For years, it was one of those apps I recommended to everyone. Type a few characters, get a paragraph. Simple, reliable, indispensable.

Then the subscription renewals kept coming, and I started asking myself: am I really getting $40 of new value each year from an app that types text for me?

Why I stayed so long

TextExpander earned its place. I had over 200 snippets built up over the years: email responses, code templates, date formats, meeting notes scaffolds, client-specific greetings. The app worked. It expanded text in every app. The sync meant my snippets were on my work Mac and personal Mac.

Switching felt risky because of all those snippets. Rebuilding 200+ snippets from scratch? That’s a weekend I didn’t want to spend.

So I kept renewing. $40/year felt like a tax on my own productivity setup.

What pushed me to actually switch

Three things hit at the same time:

The price increase. TextExpander’s pricing has crept up over the years. When I first went subscription in 2016 (or whenever they switched from one-time), it was cheaper. Now it’s $3.33/month billed annually. Not a huge amount, but for an individual user, it’s a lot for text expansion.

The cloud requirement. TextExpander requires a cloud account. My snippets sit on their servers. For an app that handles text I type all day (including client names, project details, internal templates), I started thinking about whether I wanted all of that on someone else’s infrastructure.

I realized I don’t need team features. TextExpander’s subscription funds team collaboration: shared snippet groups, org management, analytics. I’m one person. I’ve never used any of it. I’m paying for features built for 50-person support teams.

The migration

I exported my snippets from TextExpander as a CSV file. Then I opened TypeSnap and used its import feature. It read the CSV, converted my date macros, clipboard references, and cursor positioning automatically, and created all 200+ snippets in about a minute.

I expected to spend a Saturday fixing broken snippets. Instead, I spent five minutes spot-checking a handful of them. They worked. The date formatting carried over. The fill-in fields carried over. My ;sig snippet expanded exactly like it did before.

The import was the reason I chose TypeSnap specifically. I looked at Typinator, Espanso, and TypeIt4Me before this. None of them import TextExpander snippets. I would have had to recreate everything manually. TypeSnap was the only one that said “give us your export file and we’ll handle it.”

What I gained

My snippets are on my Mac. Not on a server. Not synced to a cloud I don’t control. They’re stored locally in a readable format. If TypeSnap disappeared tomorrow, my data wouldn’t disappear with it.

No more yearly renewal. $17.99 once. Done. I’ve already saved more than the purchase price compared to what I would have paid TextExpander for the next year.

Features I didn’t have before. TypeSnap has regex triggers, which TextExpander doesn’t support for individual users. I set up a regex snippet that detects any date in MM/DD/YYYY format and offers to convert it to ISO format. Niche, but useful for me.

JavaScript macros. I have a snippet that generates a random meeting ID for calendar invites. In TextExpander, I would have needed to use their fill-in menus with a workaround. In TypeSnap, it’s a three-line JavaScript function.

What I lost

Cross-platform. TextExpander works on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Chrome. TypeSnap is Mac-only. I don’t use Windows, but I did occasionally use TextExpander on my iPhone. I’ve adjusted by keeping a few critical snippets in macOS text replacement for iPhone access.

Team sharing. Not relevant for me, but if you share snippet groups with colleagues, this is TextExpander’s actual differentiator. No alternative matches it for team workflows.

The ecosystem. TextExpander has a large user community, public snippet groups, and integrations with other apps. TypeSnap is newer and smaller. That hasn’t mattered in practice, but it’s worth noting.

Six months later

I don’t think about my text expander anymore. That’s the best thing I can say about the switch. TypeSnap runs in the background, my snippets fire when I type their triggers, and everything works. It’s exactly as invisible as TextExpander was, which is what a good utility app should be.

The subscription anxiety is gone. I’m not evaluating whether I’m “getting my money’s worth” every January. I paid once, I own it, it works.

Should you switch?

Switch if: You’re an individual user paying for team features you don’t use. You’d prefer your snippets stored locally. You want to stop paying annually for an app that does the same thing it did last year.

Stay if: You use TextExpander’s team features. You need cross-platform (Windows, iOS, Chrome). Your company pays for the subscription and you don’t care about the cost.

The migration is the easy part. I expected it to be the hard part. If you have years of TextExpander snippets holding you hostage, TypeSnap’s import makes the switch painless. Export, import, done.

The harder part is making the decision. Once you do, the actual switch takes less time than reading this post.