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I've been using two utility apps many times a day for the past 10 years across various versions of macOS: Divvy (a window manager similar to Rectangle) and aText (a text expansion app similar to TextExpander).

I used to be able to type @@ anywhere and it would expand to my email address, and I could press option-shift-Z to make a window full-screen.

Since around June or July 2021 (I keep my M1 Mac up to date, so maybe there was an update in the OS or these apps?), I started noticing that none of my ~10 text expansion shortcuts would work unless I launched the aText app first then retried the shortcut (the app is always running, but I need to re-launch it using Alfred/Spotlight).

Same thing for my ~5 window management shortcuts: I have to "launch" Divvy, even though it's alway running, for the global shortcuts to trigger anything.

I tried replacing Divvy with Rectangle but got exactly the same issue: if I run a text expansion shortcut, I then have to launch Rectangle for the window management shortcuts to run, and then I'd have to launch aText for the text expansion shortcuts to run. I fully uninstalled Divvy then re-installed it in the process and still got the same issue.

What is going on? Is this a symptom of a bad macOS configuration on my end or a change in how events are managed in the OS? Outdated applications?

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As often with StackExchange, I found and solved the issue shortly after asking the question!

  • I have a broken version of aText from June 2021 that stopped auto-updating
  • Running a Divvy or Rectangle "global" shortcut would be intercepted by aText (so not triggering the window management action) then kill aText, as observed using Activity Monitor
  • I'd have to re-run the window management shortcut for it to reach Divvy, now that aText wasn't running ("launching" Divvy was just a placebo)
  • I'd have to re-launch aText for it to be able to expand text

I manually downloaded the latest aText version and everything works just like before June 2021.

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