Using TextExpander to Get Your Location

We’ve received several requests lately to add a macro for location in GPS coordinates to TextExpander. We’re not sure we want to do that, as it could reuslt in a request to access your location data appearing in an unexpected context, perhaps as a result of an unintended snippet expansion (read: typo).

We’re not able to build every requested feature into TextExpander, but there’s quite a lot you can do given TextExpander’s support for AppleScript. Here’s an example of how you can add this feature to TextExpander:

  1. Download Location Helper for AppleScript from the App Store
  2. Launch Location Helper once so that you’re prompted to allow it to access your location
  3. Create a new TextExpander snippet
  4. Set the Content: popup, above the snippet editor, to: AppleScript
  5. Set the content of the snippet to:
tell application "Location Helper"
 set listCoords to get location coordinates
 return (item 1 of listCoords as text) & ", " & (item 2 of listCoords) as text
end tell

6. Set the abbreviation
7. Switch to TextEdit and type your abbreviation

Voilà!

Have a favorite AppleScript snippet? Let us know.