19

Mavericks has a TextExpander-like feature that lets me create text shortcuts for long phrases. (When I type "ttys," for example, it replaces it with "talk to you soon.")

The feature works beautifully -- except in Chrome, where it won't work at all.

Any advice on how to make it work?

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18

Chrome doesn't call Apple's spell checking code and instead wrote their own keyboard handling routines. Since this is how the program was made, there's not much of a workaround except to do your typing in a program that calls Apple's text input libraries and paste the results into Chrome. (Similar to how Dictionary lookup using Control-Command-D didn't work for several years on Chrome either until the code was updated to call Apple's SDK for that function).

You can see this Chromium bug might apply and also, that Chrome is in the process of removing it's own spell checker / autocorrect mechanism and shifting to rely on Apple's implementation: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list?q=label:Cr-UI-Browser-Spellcheck

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  • Control-Command-D works for me on Chrome – LanguagesNamedAfterCofee Dec 9 '13 at 11:18
  • @LanguagesNamedAfterCofee Thanks for the note. I'll check as soon as I get to my Mac. Perhaps that feature was implemented since I last used chrome extensively on OS X. It was an outstanding bug on the browser for years but certainly something they could choose to implements like all the rest of the public SDK Apple offers. – bmike♦ Dec 9 '13 at 14:41
  • @LanguagesNamedAfterCofee Thanks again - Chrome 31 does indeed call the dictionary lookup so I edited the answer to be more correct. Appreciate the assist! – bmike♦ Dec 11 '13 at 3:29
  • Don't forget to use Send feedback option from About Chrome and tell them about this bug, including a link to it bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=42434 – sorin Aug 8 '16 at 15:35
4

This may not be a great solution if you have too many shortcuts to transfer, however it is nice, quick, and simple if your shortcut list is modest, or you don't mind having to manually enter and update them:

Auto Text Expander for Google Chrome

The extension also can do backup and import/export via JSON for the future.

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1

I don't think there is an actual option to enable this feature in Google Chrome. It seems like this feature is only enable for built-in software?! Correct me if I'm wrong with that assumption.

Maybe you will have to take the painful route and set up a text expander add-on in Google Chrome. Looks like the "easier" option to me.

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  • 1
    Any program is free to use Apple's text autocorrect, dictionary lookup and other accessibility routines. Google has chosen to make their browser work the same across OS and their implementation of spell check and other text services differs from Apple's. I'll try to add links to Chrome bug reports and Apple's code to my answer, but I stopped following that back in the Lion days and much has changed on OS X and Chrome fronts since then so the technical details may be stale... – bmike♦ Dec 7 '13 at 16:22
0

This google chrome extension works for me perfect. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/auto-text-expander-for-go/

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