{"id":51811,"date":"2026-05-05T14:26:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T18:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=51811"},"modified":"2026-05-05T14:26:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T18:26:40","slug":"macos-text-replacement-export-import","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/05\/macos-text-replacement-export-import\/","title":{"rendered":"macOS Text Replacement Export\/Import"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tidbits.com\/2026\/05\/04\/macos-text-replacement-export-import-works-great-until-it-doesnt\/\">Adam Engst<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/tidbits.com\/2026\/05\/04\/macos-text-replacement-export-import-works-great-until-it-doesnt\/\">\n<p>What I didn&rsquo;t know until recently is that Apple provides a hidden&mdash;but <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/guide\/mac-help\/mchl2a7bd795\/mac\">documented<\/a>, amazingly!&mdash;way to export your replacement pairs to a property list file. All you have to do is select the items to export (Command-A selects all) and drag them to the desktop. You can then edit that file in a text editor like BBEdit or TextEdit before reimporting it, which is merely a matter of dragging it back into the Text Replacements dialog. This export\/import feature is useful in three ways:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Backup:<\/strong> If you have an extensive set of text replacements, making a backup would be a sensible precaution.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sharing:<\/strong> Any Mac user can import your text replacements, so if you&rsquo;ve built up a custom collection of scientific, medical, or technical replacements, you can share them with colleagues.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Easier editing:<\/strong> Bulk changes might be easier to make outside Apple&rsquo;s one-at-a-time interface.<\/li><\/ul>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>I was all ready to give you an updated version of the TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary that could be imported into the Text Replacements dialog, but after hours of testing, I just couldn&rsquo;t make it work reliably enough.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/09\/26\/text-replacements-do-not-sync\/\">Text Replacements Do Not Sync<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Adam Engst: What I didn&rsquo;t know until recently is that Apple provides a hidden&mdash;but documented, amazingly!&mdash;way to export your replacement pairs to a property list file. All you have to do is select the items to export (Command-A selects all) and drag them to the desktop. You can then edit that file in a text [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-05-05T18:26:43Z","apple_news_api_id":"8285d1b3-6a64-4652-924a-8669715ee23e","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-05-05T18:26:43Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AgoXRs2pkRlKSSoZpcV7iPg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[131,30,2742],"class_list":["post-51811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-bug","tag-mac","tag-macos-tahoe-26"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51812,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51811\/revisions\/51812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}