{"id":24227,"date":"2021-08-15T13:50:27","date_gmt":"2021-08-15T20:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/?p=24227"},"modified":"2021-08-23T18:34:46","modified_gmt":"2021-08-24T01:34:46","slug":"ulysses-textexpander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/ulysses-textexpander\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Sync TextExpander with Ulysses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year I wrote an article explaining why I use five different apps to take notes<\/a>. One of the apps I talked about was Ulysses for writing my draft blog posts. I have found that writing on my iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard is a great way for me to focus, and Ulysses is cross-platform between Mac and iPadOS. There are lots of cross-platform options, but Ulysses wins because it supports TextExpander on the iPad.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not talking about the TextExpander keyboard for iOS, which works but is a bit clumsy, I\u2019m talking about native<\/em> support within the app with the normal onscreen or external keyboard, just like on macOS. It\u2019s glorious, but only if you can figure out how to enable it. Oddly, this feature does not appear to be very well documented, either from the TextExpander side or from the Ulysses side, and you need to do things in both apps to enable this capability.<\/p>\n

I find myself wasting a great deal of time trying to figure out how to get it to work, so I decided to write it up for myself and share it with everyone else.<\/p>\n

Finding TextExpander Settings Menu<\/h2>\n
\n
\"Gear
Gear Only Visible with Groups Tab Selected<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"No
No Gear Visible with Notes Tab Selected<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The initial setup on the TextExpander side is documented in a support article called TextExpander-Enhanced Apps for iOS (74 and counting\u2026)<\/a><\/p>\n

The purpose of the article is to tell you how to flip a switch to allow TextExpander to share snippets with TextExpander-enhanced apps, one of which is Ulysses.<\/p>\n

But even this article doesn\u2019t really give you the step-by-step process. It says \u201cUnder TextExpander\u2019s Settings\u201d as the first step, but where is that? It\u2019s not in the Mac app and it\u2019s not in Settings on iOS. You have to open the TextExpander app on your iOS device to find the settings they\u2019re talking about.<\/p>\n

When you first open the TextExpander app on your iPhone or iPad, there are two tabs at the top. Groups, and Notes. If the app opens to the Notes tab for you as it does sometimes for me, you won\u2019t be able to find the Settings menu.<\/p>\n

If you switch to the Groups tab, only then will you see a gear in the bottom left for Settings. Once you\u2019re in Settings, then you can see the section for TextExpander-enhanced apps and you can finally toggle on Share Snippets.<\/p>\n

Finding Settings for TextExpander in Ulysses<\/h2>\n
\"The
The WRONG Settings Icon in Ulysses<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That was the easy part. Now we have to uncover the hidden secret of enabling snippet syncing inside Ulysses. If you\u2019ve been around for a bit, you know that enabling features is done through some sort of settings screen. Ulysses makes finding settings a bit of an adventure.<\/p>\n

You might understandably be fooled by the gear in the upper right on the Library view, but you can dig into that menu as long as you want and you won\u2019t find the settings to enable TextExpander snippet expansion.<\/p>\n

Instead, you have to go into<\/em> a note to get to the settings. How weird is that? If you open any new or existing note, you\u2019ll see an icon in the upper right that looks like a circle with 3 dots inside it.<\/p>\n

\"The
Open a Note to See the RIGHT Settings Icon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When you tap the circle 3 dot icon, one option in the dropdown is Editor Settings. I cannot explain why Editor Settings isn\u2019t in the main settings under the gear, but that\u2019s why I\u2019m writing up this tutorial.<\/p>\n

Even when you look at Editor settings you might be baffled. You\u2019re looking for an option called Substitutions. Inside Substitutions, you\u2019ll find toggles for things like Auto-Capitalization, Auto-Correction, and Check Spelling.<\/p>\n

Below that, you\u2019ll find two things we need to enable. The first is a simple toggle that says Enable TextExpander. But the second is a button that says \u201cUpdate Snippets\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The first time you tap on Update Snippets\u2026 you\u2019ll see a flash where TextExpander briefly comes up on screen and then disappears. And then you\u2019re back to the Substitutions menu. Once you\u2019ve done the update snippets dance, you have glorious access to all of your snippets within Ulysses.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Editor
<\/figcaption><\/figure>
Editor Settings \u2192 Substitutions \u2192 Toggle on Share Snippets<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Updating Snippets<\/h2>\n

Now you\u2019re happily writing away in Ulysses with access to your snippets. Months go by and then one day you try to type a snippet and just that one snippet doesn\u2019t expand and while other snippets do<\/em> expand. I suspect this is caused when you add a new snippet on your Mac in TextExpander, and Ulysses doesn’t automatically get the update.<\/p>\n

This is precisely<\/em> when you\u2019ll need this blog post. You have to remember to open Ulysses on your iOS device and:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Create a new note or open an existing one <\/li>\n
  • Tap the circle with the three dots<\/li>\n
  • Select Editor Settings<\/li>\n
  • Select Substitutions<\/li>\n
  • Select Update Snippets<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Now you can start writing again with access to all of your glorious snippets.<\/p>\n

    Bottom Line<\/h2>\n

    The bottom line is that I love Ulysses because it syncs between my iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard and my Mac, and<\/em> because it lets me write with TextExpander. Now that I\u2019ve documented how to update my snippets, I won\u2019t have to dig around figuring it out again. Assuming I remember that I wrote this blog post that is!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Last year I wrote an article explaining why I use five different apps to take notes. One of the apps I talked about was Ulysses for writing my draft blog posts. I have found that writing on my iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard is a great way for me to focus, and Ulysses is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[147],"tags":[1989,1996,735,258,4735,4736],"class_list":["post-24227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts","tag-gear","tag-settings","tag-snippets","tag-textexpander","tag-ulysses","tag-update-snippets"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Ulysses-TextExpander-Love-800x400-1.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24227"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24232,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24227\/revisions\/24232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}