From TextExpander to Alfred

One side effect of an app developer’s decision to move to a subscription model is that the monthly charge is a regular reminder for me to re-evaluate that app’s value. Sometimes I decide the value is no longer worth the monthly overhead in both money and friction.

Such is the case with TextExpander. I’ve relied on it for years and use it many times every day, but darn if that monthly fee hasn’t been nagging at me.

So today I moved¹ all of my snippets into Alfred and canceled my TextExpander subscription. Alfred’s snippet implementation is not quite as complete as TextExpander’s, but it’s good enough for how I use it. I’ll miss the occasional benefits on iOS but I don’t write that much on iOS. What I won’t miss is the monthly cost and mental overhead of a software subscription it turns out I didn’t really need.