Snippets

In this section

• Creating and managing snippets

  Hover a snippet and a checkbox appears over its icon. Tick one and every row gets a box, and a bar at the top of the list shows how many you've picked. From the bar you can move them all to a collection, add a tag to all of them, or delete them.

• Abbreviations and inline expansion

  Good abbreviations are memorable and unlikely to be typed by accident. Prefix them with z , j , ; , or double a letter.

• Content types

  Change type with the dropdown at the top of the editor.

• Collections and tags

  Collections are folders in your vault. Click + next to COLLECTIONS to add one; right-click to rename, delete or nest. Tags are labels in the snippet's frontmatter; click one in the sidebar to filter.

• Visual indicators in lists

  Small icons to the left of the collection name flag snippets that need something extra:

• Rich text editor

  Set content type to Rich Text for a WYSIWYG toolbar: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, code, alignment, bullet and numbered lists, font size and family (10 macOS fonts), text and highlight color, undo and redo, and a link button. The link button opens a small form for the text and the address: select words first and they are the text; with the caret in a link it edits that one, and can remove it. An address without https:// gets it, and a bare email becomes a mailto: link.

• Markdown snippets

  Set content type to Markdown for a monospace editor with an Edit / Preview toggle and full the common Markdown flavor: headings, lists, bold, italic, code blocks, tables, task lists, strikethrough.

• Nested snippets

  Use {{snippet:abbreviation}} to embed one snippet in another.

• Import, export and restore points

  The New button's menu in the snippet list has the doors in and out. Import from another text expander reads a CSV (a header row with an abbreviation and a body column, or plain two-column rows) and shows what it found before writing anything. Import Browser Extension reads a package the Mac app or another browser exported, and Import Template (.zip) reads a template pack. Export Package for Browser Extension writes your whole library as one file, which is also the backup that survives an uninstall.

• Where expansion runs

  Settings → Snippets → Where expansion runs has two lists of sites. Never on these sites leaves abbreviations alone on those hosts and everything under them. Only on these sites does the opposite: once it has anything in it, expansion runs nowhere else. Type a site as you would read it in the address bar; example.com covers mail.example.com too. The master switch above them stops expansion everywhere.