The brilliant text tool should be installed by default on every Mac. As its maker says: aText accelerates your typing by replacing abbreviations with frequently used phrases you define. Because it costs just 5 bucks it's sort of considered the el cheapo brother of the popular TextExpander. But in reality it gives every text expander a run for its money. It's actively maintained by a friendly Mac dev, whose other system tool is gaining some well deserved praise too.

If aText looks interesting, you might also want to check out Typinator. While aText is more powerful than TextExpander, Typinator is more powerful than aText.

I've used this app a lot when I was working in customer support, and often time miss it when I have to write my email (or anything repetative actually). I will download it again and get back to using it!

Great that PH also surfaces "older" products.

Pros:

Faster to type!

Cons:

UI of the app could be improved.

I’ve been using for years and silently smug about all the money I’ve saved not using textexpander...

Really cool and powerful app. Very useful to quickly fill in frequently typed text like "Best regards" in emails.

aText is great. Make shortcuts like @@ for your email address, @ $ for work email etc. Things you type a lot like addresses, phone numbers, greetings and so on. If you moderate a forum or group this is a godsend as wel.

Pros:

Syncs across platforms, works extremely well

Cons:

Had issues transferring / activating license in the past - hopefully works now

Downloading this now. I often includes similar phrases or replies in email and Twitter. It's quite silly to retype the same thing every time.

I love this app so much!

This definitely helps! THX

aText is one of the best Mac apps I have ever known. It's super fast in expanding text and syncs throughout all your computers in real-time. I am glad aText has a place in Product Hunt homepage today. Deserves every bit!

Started using aText after Text Expanded moved to an obscenely expensive subscription model. Can't complain. It works perfectly.

Pros:

Works as advertised

Cons:

Randomly stops expanding text once in a while. I have to restart it and it'll work fine.

I love aText, been a user for years. Solid app and a great price. Would be so good to get my text snippets on to iOS too.

I've been using aText for years and it's so freaking useful. Addresses, phone numbers, dates and code snippets. A must have

Was totally thinking about this type of solution the other day, since I love vim and snippets with coding, why not apply that to the rest of my typing activities?

A great replacement for the horrible business model of TextExpander

Pros:

Much cheaper then textexpander

Cons:

none I can think of

Not a whole lot to add. No subscription necessary -- just a one-time purchase. Great product.

Pros:

Simple and straightforward. Does its one job really well.

Cons:

There are some (rare) occasions where a webpage's content is secure and aText is disabled.

What are the superior sides against Mac os built-in function?

A highly pimped version of an already awesome native MacOS feature… Interesting <3

We had been using this for years for our customer support team. It’s a real game changer if you’re looking for upping productivity and reducing reply time.

I’ve been using aText for years and really like it but have to say I also love Alfred’s text expander because it also syncs seamlessly across macs.