Settings and Hotkeys
Settings
- Run when Automaton starts: Whether this autotyper file will be listening to hotkeys and the your typing when Automaton starts. Corresponds to the Run checkbox in Preferences.
- Is running now: Whether this configuration is active right now. Note that the active status will revert to the value in Run when Automaton starts when you close the AutoTyper window, so this setting is only temporary.
Restore Pasteboard
Typing expansion programs work by putting the expansion in the Pasteboard, pasting it, and then restoring it to the previous value. You can change whether to restore, and after how long here. If you find in using AutoTyper that you are getting the wrong value pasted - i.e. the old value of the Pasteboard, try increasing this delay, or else turning off restoration altogether. The default value is 1 second, which seems to work for most people.
Hot Keys
Hot Key to Disable AutoTyper
You can set up a hotkey to temporarily disable expansion of abbreviations. If you have Growl installed, you will get a notification to remind you it has been disabled.
There is another way to temporarily disable AutoTyper. The special key combination left arrow followed by right arrow, will prevent expansion for the next key press. If you know an expansion is about to take place, but want to prevent it, left then right arrow will do the trick.
Hot Key to create from selection
If you find yourself in another application repeating the same text, you can highlight the text and hit this hotkey to automatically open AutoTyper and create a new abbreviation for it.
The abbreviation will be added to the selected group if the Typer window is already open, or the first group if not. The first group is determined by how you have sorted the groups. Sort order is remembered. You can sort by User Order, and use drag and drop to use a user-specified sort order. You can also drag abbreviations into a different group.
Hot Key to create from Pasteboard
This creates a new abbreviation from the contents of the pasteboard.
The abbreviation will be added to the selected group if the Typer window is already open, or the first group if not. The first group is determined by how you have sorted the groups. Sort order is remembered. You can sort by User Order, and use drag and drop to use a user-specified sort order. You can also drag abbreviations into a different group.
Hot Key to open this window
You can set a hot key to open the AutoTyper window.
Hot Key to attempt expansion
You can set a hot key to manually attempt expansion. This is useful either if you prefer not to have automatic expansion, or else if you want to be able to click in existing documents and attempt expansions without having to insert a delimiter. This is especially useful for Smart Spell, either for correcting existing documents, or else if you prefer not to have automatic spelling correction.
Defaults
These are the global default values, and they have the same meaning as in the main Typer window. See the Advanced Options for more information.
Delimiters
AutoTyper considers a delimiter to mark the beginning and end of a new word or abbreviation. You can modify the delimiters in the Settings tab.
Also, any characters in the set of delimiters will be disabled as delimiters if they occur in any of your abbreviations. If your abbreviations contain a particular character, then it doesn't make sense that it should be a separater between abbreviations.