Attempting to trigger TextExpander SDK integration refresh.
What feature did you use:
TextExpander integration.
What happened:
Neither the toggle nor the Enable TextExpander Snippets button were responsive.
What did you expect to happen:
Normally, the Enable TextExpander Snippets button causes the X-Callback-URL-powered integration flow to refresh snippets.
(Let me know if you’d like me to move the above to Bug Reports.)
I’m going to assume you devs haven’t been thinking much about the teSDK since its announced “sunsetting” last August and have probably been waiting to see… any further progress.
Later this year, when we release the updated keyboard, TextExpander will no longer support updating snippet data via the x-callback-url mechanism. The updated TextExpander will also no longer support fill-ins initiated from apps with SDK support.
In case there’s nobody at ShinyFrog who’s actually invested as a TextExpander user on iOS/iPadOS, I suppose I can get around to relaying my perspective on their purposed replacement as someone who’s professional life will be profoundly impacted if/whenever this transition does occur…
For now, though, the most relevant argument I have to make to Bear 2’s development is: aside from the single announcement last year, nothing else has changed for TextExpander users on the release builds of the iOS/iPadOS apps, so if it would be at all possible, I would plead for you to carry Bear 1’s teSDK integration over to Bear 2 in order to maintain support for TextExpander users, going forward.
I didn’t realise this was a thing (even in Bear 1.0). Is it supposed to enable TextExpander snippets without the keyboard on iOS? If so, that’s amazing and I’ve been looking for a solution like this for a while!
The keyboard works… OK. But it is more taps than I’d like.
we are currently not sure we want to implement the TextExpander snippets support in Bear 2 mostly because we are trying as hard as possible to avoid third-party SDKs. The preference you can find in the beta is temporary left there while we build the new preferences panels.
Gah I’m so torn on this, but wanted to throw my 2¢ at @trix180 because I think this is an often overlooked yet super important part of note making on iOS.
I used to be a TE “power user” but with all the suspect choices Smile has made over the years + slow app performance, I no longer use it on my Mac and instead use a combo of Keyboard Maestro and Typinator which I actually massively prefer over TE.
AFAIK, TextExpander is the only good solution available on iOS for anything more complicated than the one liners Apple’s “text replacement” can handle. And because of that I LOVED Bear’s TE implementation (it has saved me hours over many years of use), and so continued using TE for iOS Bear alone (I hate having to switch to another app to do the expansion then switch back to my notes app so always came back to TE in Bear). So if Shiny Frog decides to ditch TE support in iOS, I will no longer have any use for TE. Full stop.
But I understand not wanting to rely on external SDKs, so I wanted to throw out a third option:
Built-in Bear snippet expansion.
Basically a super lightweight plain text snippet expander built by Shiny Frog and triggered by typed strings in the Bear editor. Something simple like Apple’s “text replacement” but that allows for multiple lines of text and easy management inside Bear. Obviously with a Preferences toggle to disable it on macOS since there are plenty of super powerful solutions on macOS.
I’m just spitballing here, but it would be incredibly sad to no longer have a good way to use more complex snippets inside Bear iOS.
There is a TextExpander multi language keyboard I had totally forgotten about, I just activated it on my iPhone now and it works in Bear 2.0 with all my snippet at hand
oops! its a bit wonky, think my version is very old and outdated.
Oh interesting. Thanks for the link. I swear I tested this out and the newlines got stripped out or there was some other issue… I may mess with this if TE support is stripped out of Bear 2.
Hmmm actually the issue might have been related to duplicating snippets, since things become problematic if you’re used to using specific text strings to trigger expansion for certain stuff. I’ve got some powerful Keyboard Maestro & Typenator snippets that I use on macOS that I wouldn’t want to conflict with Apple’s expansion… but maybe I’ll test out how conflict resolution works. I’m guessing Apple’s takes precedence, but I need to test this. Sorry thinking out loud lol but thanks for the link!
