Smile's Mac shortcut utility ($34.95) has taught me how much of what I do can be automated. A sobering proposition I suppose, but once I accepted the repetition of my writing practices, I realized I could use it to truncate my most tedious tasks. From supplementing keyboard shortcuts to autocorrecting typos, from completing online forms to creating document templates, TextExpander has earned itself a coveted spot in my workflow. While its all-business interface is uninviting at first blush, once I began to use it—and reap its rewards—I learned to love its system-wide Snippets. Snippets, Abbreviations, and Groups Although TextExpander 4 is not available on the Mac App Store, downloading and installing the utility from Smile's website is nearly as simple.

The only complexity is that you will need to grant TextExpander access to your Mac's Accessibility Access. (Tick the boxes for TextExpander and TextExpander Helper in the Security & Privacy pane of System Preferences).

You can configure TextExpander via a shortcut added to your menu bar. System(s)-Wide As I have already suggested, TextExpander operates across your Mac. That said, I did find that it works most cohesively with Apple applications. For example, when I expanded my midterm Snippet in Apple Mail, the formatting matched TextExpander.

In ($119, 4.5 stars), however, the 12-point typeface shrank to 9-point, which could prove a nagging issue. As you build a library of Snippets, TextExpander's location in the menu bar is a godsend.

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On more than one occasion I forgot an Abbreviation, but I found I could use the menu bar to search for Snippets or browse my library. That Library is not confined to one Mac, either. Thanks to DropBox synchronization, you can access your Snippets across multiple Macs or even iOS devices via ($5). TimeProtector TextExpander includes a feature called Statistics that tracks and visualizes your usage.

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In the course of testing, I saved myself about nineteen thousand characters and more than an hour of typing. I can only imagine the tally this time next year.

Given how many ways there are to spend time, any utility that reclaims it, in a manner that supports rather than encumbers your existing workflow, deserves commendation. Smile's TextExpander 4 earns our Editors' Choice award because it accelerates routine tasks and enables users to think more strategically about how they use time on their devices.