Sample Page Title

Chrome is a useful resource beast. I spend most of my day within the browser, hopping between Gmail, Asana, WordPress, Airtable, and a smorgasbord of web sites and providers, so I attempt to preserve any extras to a minimal. Meaning no Chrome extensions until they’re work-required. There’s one exception to the rule, although, and it’s Textual content Blaze, a strong textual content expander that lives and syncs throughout all of my Chrome installations.

After I began utilizing Textual content Blaze, round three or 4 years in the past, I used to be in search of a textual content expander app for my Pixelbook that will work equally to TextExpander on my iMac. After setting it up and utilizing it for a couple of days, I let go of the Mac app and utterly switched to Textual content Blaze as a result of it was really cross-platform and I may sync it throughout each my iMac and Pixelbook. Higher but, I may add the Chrome extension to each my private and work Chrome profiles, so I’d at all times have entry to it, it doesn’t matter what.

For those who’ve used textual content expander apps earlier than, you in all probability know the whole lot Textual content Blaze can do. It gives snippets, dynamic components, clipboard help, and cursor placement without spending a dime customers, with extra (types, photos, a number of customers) for paid subscribers.

However should you’ve by no means tried a textual content expander earlier than, let me clarify why this can be a life-changer.

Textual content expander apps are like shortcuts that paste an extended little bit of textual content with a couple of keystrokes. The simplest instance is to stick your full handle whenever you sort one thing like /add for instance, otherwise you signature whenever you sort /sig, so that you don’t need to sort the whole lot up time and again.

Different examples embody template-like emails or replies and any little bit of textual content you typically must sort. At a time when AI can write complete paragraphs for us, who has time to repeatedly sort the identical factor? We’re all trying to save time, not waste it.

For me, a textual content expander like Textual content Blaze saves lots of time in each my job and my on a regular basis on-line life. I typically write about merchandise out there within the EU or UK, however my keyboard doesn’t have the euro or pound symbols. To keep away from digging within the symbols menu every time, I’ve made a snippet that replaces /eur with € and /gbp with £, so I don’t break my typing stride when writing about costs outdoors the US.

In contrast to my iMac, my Pixelbook — and most Chromebooks — don’t have an em-dash “—” image on their keyboard. It’s a personality I typically use as a author, so I’ve arrange a snippet to exchange /em with — and now I can rapidly and simply add an em-dash whereas writing on my Pixelbook. This alone is value putting in the extension for my very own use, ha!

Then there are different symbols. After I discuss Android apps, the /of shortcut inserts the overflow ⋮ image. After I wish to point out temperatures whereas reviewing telephones’ thermal efficiency, good thermostats, or smartwatches with a temperature sensor, the /deg shortcut will get me the ° image. All of those are small time-savers that add up over the course of a day’s work, not to mention every week, month, or 12 months.

However issues go to the subsequent degree once I begin digging into the Android Authority-specific shortcuts I’ve arrange in Textual content Blaze.

Our crew makes use of a set of particular instructions to insert most of the components you see when studying our articles. The TL;DR bins, opinion put up alerts, YouTube video embeds, highlighted pull quotes just like the one under, FAQ bins, and extra are all dynamic components that we add on demand. There are buttons for these in WordPress, however I hate stopping mid-flow to succeed in for my trackpad, transfer the cursor, and click on a button. I’ll at all times select to sort over utilizing the mouse.

My Android Authority snippets don’t simply add the code for these components, although. In addition they velocity issues up by putting the cursor precisely the place I would like it to be, so I can sort the textual content as wanted, like within the /pq pull quote snippet within the screenshot above.

For my YouTube snippet above, I’ve sped issues up additional by setting it up so it mechanically pastes my clipboard. Now, all I must do is copy the video’s code from the URL, go to WordPress, and sort /yt to get the video to embed. This replaces the time-wasting 5-button course of the crew presently has in place.

Textual content Blaze can do a lot, way more than these “fundamental” snippets, with advanced types and tables, autopilot clicks and cursor actions, in addition to command pack integrations with Gmail and LinkedIn. Most of those are paid options, although, and fall beneath a $2.99-$6.99 month-to-month subscription. They’re not crucial options for my very own use instances, so I persist with the free model.

After a couple of years with Textual content Blaze, there’s no going again for me. That is essentially the most helpful productiveness extension on my Chrome setup now. One of many first issues I do when organising a brand new laptop or Chrome set up is to signal into my account to sync all my snippets, in any other case I discover myself typing /em and /eur to no avail. I simply want Chrome extensions have been supported on Android natively so I’d have entry to my shortcuts when working from my Pixel Pill.