iOS Tip: Text Expansion In iOS 5

This Mac tip is provided by Mark Greentree and was originally posted on Mark’s blog – Everyday Mac Support. For more of Mark’s tips visit his site, follow him on Twitter, or browse his archive of posts here.


How To: Text Expansion In iOS 5

Users of the Mac application TextExpander swear by the amount of time the well known application can save them when typing the same text over and over again.

One of the new features in iOS 5 allows for similar functionality.

Simply proceed to Settings > General > Keyboard and you will be presented with the following options:

By default one shortcut exists which is for “On My Way” as highlighted in the above image. You can tap on this existing shortcut and make changes as can be seen in the below image:

To add a new shortcut simply select “Add New Shortcut” and the following window will be displayed:

Simply enter the phrase you would like to use when the shortcut is inputted. Then assign a shortcut to the phrase. An example can be seen below:

Upon tapping save your new shortcut will be placed in the list as shown below:

Then when entering text into an email for example you will simply type the shortcut. In this case hhw and you will notice in the image below that Hello World will be presented. Simply tap the space bar and the full phrase will be applied.

For more helpful tips, check out our full collection of tutorials by visiting our How-To category!

Mark Greentree

Mark Greentree is the principle blogger and podcast creator of Everyday Mac Support. His aim is to inform users at all levels of experience how to get the most out of the Apple hardware and associated software. He is the lead host of Not Another Mac Podcast, an Apple based round table discussion with Mac users and experts from all over world.