Zach’s ugly mug (his face) Zach Leat­herman

My Favorite Typinator Macros

On Twitter (archived) February 07, 2020

I used to use TextExpander for text expansion/macros and use Typinator now. I don’t remember why I switched (I think it was vaguely associated with performance) but I’m happy with Typinator now. I use this utility a lot, probably more than a hundred times per day.

Here is an example of what it looks like:

And here is a small sampling of my favorite macros:

Name Abbreviation Expansion
Numero ;no №
Ratios ;ratio ∶∶∶∶
Ellipsis ;sis …
Zero Width Space ;zerow ​
Feet ;feet ′
Inches ;inch ″
My email address ;ema zach@zachleat.com
Shrug face ;? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Troll ;troll ಠ_ಠ

It really gets fancy when Typinator can do user prompts (with default values) and math based on those values. For example, I use a macro that will automatically calculate an em value based on a supplied parent size (and output a comment documenting the math).

em Units

Abbreviation: ;ems expands to:

{{size=?Size}}{{parentsize=?Parent Size<16>}}{{#size/parentsize}}em; /* {{#size}}px /{{#parentsize}} */

Sample Output:

2em; /* 32px /16 */

em Media Query

Abbrevation: ;emq expands to:

@media (min-width: {{size=?Size}}{{#size/16}}em) {. /* {{#size}}px */
{^}
.}

Sample Output:

@media (min-width: 48em) { /* 768px */

}

html page

Abbrevation: ;html expands to:

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta charset="utf-8">
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
        <title></title>
    </head>
    <body>
        {^}
    </body>
</html>

{^} controls where your cursor goes.

console.log

Abbreviation: ;log expands to:

console.log( {^} );

I totally use proper debugging tools and unit tests and barely use this one I swear.

Zach Leatherman is a builder for the web at Font Awesome and the creator of Build Awesome (née Eleventy/11ty), an award-winning open source website generator. He measures website performance with speedlify and at one point became too fixated on web fonts. He has given 86 talks in nine different countries at events like Beyond Tellerrand, Smashing Conference, Jamstack Conf, CSSConf, and The White House. Learn more about Zach »