Help: Guided Tour: Menu Bar Item

The TextExpander icon appears in the menu bar by default. Clicking the icon provides a convenient way to:

• Search Snippets
  Type a few letters into the search field and all the matching snippets are presented.

  Press return or tab to move focus to the list of results where up and down arrow keys move the selection and return inserts the selected snippet, or click on a snippet to insert.

• Open TextExpander
  Reveal TextExpander's main window.
  (If you choose to hide TextExpander in the Dock (see Preferences: Appearance), TextExpander's Main Window is also hidden.)

• Enable/Disable Expansion
  Useful when you want to temporarily disable TextExpander so that you can type without any expansions being triggered.
  

• Create New Snippet...
  Opens the Create Snippet window. Enter the snippet content and abbreviation, choose a snippet group to assign it to, and click Create.

• Create Snippet from Selection...
  Opens the Create Snippet window with the currently selected text as the snippet content. Create an abbreviation, choose a snippet group to assign it to, and click Create.

• Create Snippet from Clipboard...
  Opens the Create Snippet window with the current content of the Clipboard as the snippet content. Create an abbreviation, choose a snippet group to assign it to, and click Create.

• Edit Last Expanded Snippet...
  Opens the snippet you expanded last so that you can edit it. After you make the desired changes, click Save.

• View all your snippets
  All your snippet groups are accessible from the TextExpander menu bar item.

The appearance of the TextExpander icon varies to indicate expansion status. If expansion is disabled, the icon changes to gray. If an application enables secure event input, which blocks expansion, a red lock appears on top of the icon and the Enable/Disable Expansion menu item shows which application enabled secure input. You can read more about secure event input and TextExpander on this web page.