What happens after
you download
Four steps, about a minute. Including the macOS permission prompt that catches people out, explained before you see it rather than after.
Free text expander, clipboard manager and markdown notes. $18 once for unlimited clips, notes sync and AI prompts.
The four steps, honestly named
- 01
Open the app and sign in with your email
TypeFire sends a one-time code, you paste it in, done. There is no password to create. The account exists so your licence and sync can follow you to a new Mac, not so we can look at what you type.
- 02
Grant Accessibility permission
macOS will ask. This is the one that surprises people, so here is the honest explanation: a text expander has to notice you typed an abbreviation before it can replace it, and macOS routes that through Accessibility. TypeFire never records, stores, or transmits your keystrokes. You can revoke the permission in System Settings at any time and the app keeps working, minus expansion.
- 03
Create one snippet and give it an abbreviation
Do not build a library yet. Make one: your email address, triggered by zem. Then go type zem in Mail or Slack and watch it expand. That single moment is what makes the rest click.
- 04
Turn on Clips, if you want the clipboard manager
Clips does not switch itself on. Turning on something that watches your clipboard should be a deliberate choice, so there is an Enable button the first time and a toggle in Settings after that.
Learn these and you have learned the app
Almost everything in TypeFire hangs off one of two keystrokes. If you remember nothing else from this page, remember these.
Find any snippet
A Spotlight-style search over everything in your library. Use it when you know you saved something but cannot remember the abbreviation. This is the one people forget exists, and it is the one that makes a big library usable.
Get back what you copied
Opens a compact overlay near your cursor with your recent clips. Type to filter, press ⌘1 through ⌘9 to paste one directly, Esc to dismiss. You never leave the app you are typing in.
Start with one, not fifty
The most common mistake is spending an evening building a library you then never use. Make one snippet, use it for a day, and let the rest come from noticing what you retype.
Pick something you type weekly
Your email address, your calendar link, your address, the paragraph you send when someone asks for pricing. Boring is good. Boring is what you actually retype.
Choose a trigger you would never type by accident
Short, and not a real word. Prefixing with a letter you rarely start words with works well: zem for email, zaddr for address, zcal for your booking link.
Test it somewhere harmless
Open Notes or a new Mail draft and type the abbreviation. Seeing it expand once is what turns this from a concept into a habit.
Then let Clips feed the library
As you work, things you copy land in Clips. When you notice you have copied the same thing twice, right-click it and choose Save as snippet. Your library builds itself out of real evidence.
The three things people hit
Nothing expands anywhere
Accessibility permission is almost always the answer. System Settings, Privacy and Security, Accessibility, and confirm TypeFire is toggled on. After a TypeFire update macOS occasionally drops the grant, so re-check it there first.
It expands in some apps but not others
A few apps sandbox text input aggressively. TypeFire falls back to a clipboard paste in web apps and Electron apps, which handles almost all of them. If a specific app misbehaves, tell us which one, that is genuinely useful.
Clips is not recording anything
Clips is off until you turn it on, by design. Settings, Clyp, Enable. Note that copies from password managers are never recorded no matter what: that is deliberate and not a bug.
Because macOS routes keystroke observation through Accessibility, and a text expander has to notice that you typed an abbreviation before it can replace it.
There is no other API on macOS that allows this. TypeFire never records, stores, or transmits your keystrokes: it holds a small in-memory buffer of the last few characters, checks it against a trie of your own abbreviations, and discards it.
You can revoke the permission in System Settings, Privacy and Security, Accessibility at any time, and the app keeps working for everything except inline expansion. If expansion stops after a TypeFire update, re-check that toggle first, because macOS sometimes drops the grant when an app's signature changes.
Yes, sign-in is required, and it is an email one-time code rather than a password.
The account exists so your Pro licence can be restored on a new Mac and so iCloud sync can be attached to you. It is not used to look at your content: your snippets live in a folder on your disk that you choose, and your clips live in an encrypted database on your Mac that never leaves it.
No. Clips is off until you explicitly enable it.
The first time you open it you get a one-time screen with an Enable button, because turning on something that watches your clipboard should be a decision you make rather than a default you discover later. After that, the toggle lives in Settings under Clyp.
Once it is on, a Snippets and Clips switch appears at the top of the sidebar, and the 1 and 2 keys move between them.
Something you genuinely retype every week, not something impressive.
Your email address is the classic: trigger it with zem, then go type zem in Mail or Slack. Other good first candidates are your postal address, your calendar booking link, your bank details for invoices, and the paragraph you send whenever someone asks about pricing.
Pick a trigger you would never type by accident, which usually means short and not a real word. Prefixing with a rare starting letter works well: zem, zaddr, zcal.
In order of likelihood: Accessibility permission is not granted, the abbreviation collides with something you type normally, or you are in an app that sandboxes text input.
Check System Settings, Privacy and Security, Accessibility first, since that accounts for most cases. If expansion works in Notes but not in one specific app, TypeFire's clipboard-paste fallback usually covers web and Electron apps, so tell us which app fails because that is a fixable bug rather than a limitation.
TypeFire imports both. For TextExpander, export your groups and import them in TypeFire's settings; abbreviations, plain text, and formatted content carry over.
Fill-in placeholders transfer: TypeFire prompts you for the values as the snippet expands. For aText, export to CSV and use the aText importer.
You can also import a JSON export from the TypeFire Chrome extension, which round-trips cleanly in both directions.
Most people install both, but neither requires the other.
The Mac app handles native app text fields like Slack desktop, Mail, Notes, and Xcode, and it is the only surface with the clipboard manager and the AI prompt features. The Chrome extension covers every web app on any operating system, including Windows, Linux, and ChromeOS. Snippets move between them through JSON export and import.
Launch offer. When you upgrade to Pro inside the app, enter the code TF4LIFE at checkout for $8 instead of $18, until 30 August 2026.
One snippet is enough to start
Download it, make zem expand to your email address, and decide from there.
Free text expander, clipboard manager and markdown notes. $18 once for unlimited clips, notes sync and AI prompts.
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