Developer Blog

Breevy 3.07 was released today. We added date and time math macros, which you can use in conjunction with the regular date and time macros to make Breevy output a date or time that is in the future (or past).

Here are a couple of examples (assume it's a Wednesday and the time is 5:30 PM):

• If the replacement text is In one hour, it will be %(AddHours 1)%(Hour):%(Minute) %(AMorPM), the text that will be outputted after you type the corresponding abbreviation for said replacement text is: In one hour, it will be 06:30 PM.

• If the replacement text is Three days ago was a %(SubtractDays 3)%(WeekdayName), the text that will be outputted is: Three days ago was a Sunday.

You can add or subtract years, months, days, hours, minutes, or seconds (just replace "hours" and "days" above with whatever you'd like to add or subtract).

The new version can be downloaded here. Enjoy!

Today we released Breevy 3.06. The big new change in this release: Breevy is now portable and can be run from a USB flash drive!

When Breevy detects it is running on a flash drive, instead of saving your abbreviations and preferences to your computer, Breevy stores that data onto the flash drive it is running on. This allows you to take your abbreviations with you everywhere you go and use (as well as modify) them with Breevy on any Windows computer, without having to install Breevy on that computer. Just plug in your USB flash drive, run Breevy from it, and then you can type your abbreviations at any time in any app as usual, and make changes to them too.

To download the portable package of Breevy, just visit the portable download page. On that page you'll also find instructions on how to copy Breevy onto your flash drive (it's really easy).

The regular, non-portable Breevy installer, as usual, can be downloaded from Breevy's main page.

TextExpander users (and Breevy users, too) rejoice: Breevy v3, with support for two-way Dropbox sync with TextExpander, as well as support for TextExpander exporting, was released yesterday.

Back in early April we released a version of Breevy that allowed for one-way Dropbox sync with TextExpander. That is, your TextExpander snippets would be sync'd into Breevy and you could use them in Windows, and any time you made changes to them in TextExpander they'd automatically be updated in Breevy.... but if you modified those snippets in Breevy, or added new ones, the changes you made wouldn't be sync'd back into TextExpander.

But with Breevy v3, with Dropbox sync enabled, not only will changes made to your snippets in TextExpander be sync'd into Breevy automatically (so you can use them on Windows), but changes made to your snippets in Breevy will be sync'd back into TextExpander automatically, too.

Which means full access to and use of your TextExpander snippets, whether you're on a Mac or a Windows PC.

Setting up Dropbox sync in both programs is pretty easy. On your Mac (or Macs), make sure Dropbox is installed. Then, open up TextExpander's preferences pane, switch to the Sync tab, and set the Synchronization method to Dropbox. (If you're using TextExpander 2.x, follow these instructions instead.)

Then, on your Windows PC (or PCs), again make sure Dropbox is installed, open up Breevy's preferences window, check the Enable Dropbox sync button in the Dropbox sync tab, and set the Sync mode to TextExpander Compatible.

After that, you'll be able to use your TextExpander snippets on all of your Macs as well as on all of your Windows PCs, and any time you make changes to your snippets -- whether in TextExpander on your Mac, or in Breevy on your PC -- they'll automatically be updated on your other computers -- be they Macs or PCs -- so you can start using them right away.

How awesome is that?

Other improvements include keyboard accelerators for the main OK/Cancel/Apply buttons, and a better-organized File menu. You can now also press Ctrl+S to apply your changes, and Ctrl+F and start a search. Some other enhancements were made as well.

Download Breevy v3 now and try it out!

Last Friday, Breevy 2.50 was released. One of the neat new features added is support for Dropbox sync.

If you have more than one computer with Breevy installed on it, you'll definitely like this Dropbox sync feature, because it allows you to use the same abbreviations on all of your computers without you having to do any work.

It's pretty simple to set up; just download and install Dropbox (free) on all of your computers, and then on each computer that Breevy is installed on, enable Dropbox sync in Breevy's Preferences.

From that point on, whenever you make changes to your abbreviations on one computer, those changes will automatically be applied on all of your other computers. Which means there's no manual work involved for you each time you make changes: no exporting, re-importing, etc. etc. Breevy handles that stuff for you automatically, in the background.

And we didn't forget our TextExpander (Mac) users: TextExpander Dropbox sync support was added, too. With Dropbox sync enabled in TextExpander on your Mac and Dropbox sync enabled in Breevy (and sync mode set to TextExpander Compatible) on your Windows PC, any changes made to your snippets in TextExpander will be automatically sync'd into Breevy.

Also, first-time users who haven't imported their TextExpander snippets into Breevy yet can do so simply by enabling Dropbox sync in both TextExpander and Breevy.

You can download the latest version of Breevy -- which includes support for Dropbox sync -- here.

Yesterday, Breevy v2.40 was released. Lots of improvements were made, but one of the coolest (we think) is support for TextExpander snippet importing.

Prior to this new version, Breevy worked well as a Windows alternative to TextExpander... but if you wanted to use your existing TextExpander snippets with Breevy, you had to manually type each individual snippet into Breevy, a process that could literally take hours.

But with v2.40, available for download now, if you want to use your TextExpander snippets on Windows, you can just select File -> Import TextExpander Snippets in Breevy's main window, select the TextExpander snippet file you copied from your Mac to your Windows PC (the copying process is easy; for those who aren't sure how to do this, check out Breevy's help file or press F3 while in Breevy), and then you'll have your TE snippets imported instantly and ready for immediate use.

If you haven't already done so, download Breevy now and let us know how you like it.