MacOS – How to reset Mac OS X text substitution

macostext;

Whenever I type "foo" it gets replaced by "bar". It is working system wide. I can see this behavior in Chrome, TextEdit and other apps. Even partial text like "Somefoo" gets converted to "Somebar". After initial search, I tried changing settings in "Language & Text". I can't find any entry for "foo" or "bar" in it. I tried disabling substitution. It didn't work. I tried "Restore Defaults". It didn't work. I even tried adding rule like "foo" to be replaced by "qux". It doesn't honor this rule and "foo" still gets replaced by "bar". I don't know what else I can try. How can I reset this substitution? Is their any system file or something which I look where these rules are written so I can change it?

I'm using Mac OS X 10.8.4.

Thanks!

Best Answer

Try running these commands:

defaults delete -g NSUserReplacementItems
defaults delete -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems

Then quit and reopen some application and test if it worked.

NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems is used in 10.9 and NSUserReplacementItems is used in 10.8 and earlier.

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Add text substitution for all words ending with certain letters

What you're looking for is probably a text-replacement suite that supports regular expressions. They can be cryptic at first but once you learn the syntax, they are extremely powerful.

There was a previous question on another site that netted a product called Find and Replace It which looks appropriate for your usage.

MacOS – Moving the Caret with OS X Text Substitution

I don't think it's possible. You might add a snippet like this in TextExpander though:

Thank you %|.

Or use DefaultKeyBinding.dict:

{
    "\UF704" = { // F1
        "t" = {
            "h" = {
                "x" = (insertText:, "Thank you .", moveBackward:);
            };
        };
    };
}

Best Answer

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Add text substitution for all words ending with certain letters

MacOS – Moving the Caret with OS X Text Substitution

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