Mac: turn off automatic capitalization + productivity tip

Today we're talking about a feature of macOS that has been annoying people for years and that has been switched off for over a year because I was fed up at some point. It's about automatic capitalization, which the Mac does whenever you don't need it.

Classic example: You start an e-mail in Apple Mail with the words "Hello XYZ," and then write "enclosed the PDF for" in the line below. And what does the Mac do? He's like, "Oh, there's a word at the beginning of the line! I'll quickly capitalize that.” So the “anbei” becomes an “anbei”, which of course is total nonsense, because we had a comma in the salutation above.

Switch off automatic capitalization in the system settings

The good news is that the Mac can be weaned off of this nonsense. To do this, proceed as follows:

1. System Settings
2. Keyboard
3. Select the "Text" submenu
4. Uncheck "Capitalize words automatically".

You also have the "disadvantage" that lower case letters will not be corrected after a point in the future, but I'm happy to accept that. If your mistakes persist, I find it a lot less annoying than typing something right three times a day and then the Mac wrongly "corrects" it.

Productivity tip: handy text replacements in the same control panel

If you're already in the "Text" area of ​​the system settings for the keyboard, you can also set up another feature there: automatic text replacement. The way it works is that you define a specific string and then decide what to replace it with. I have realized a few practical things that I would like to give you here as an example:

• @@ becomes my e-mail address (very useful because I have to type this in a lot when registering on any website.)
• @tel is converted to my phone number
• @iban is converted into my IBAN account number (I can never remember it)
• @bic is replaced by the BIC number
• @ust will be replaced by my sales tax identification number
• @schatz is replaced with the name of the current woman (haha, just kidding!)
• etc.

You already notice: You can really use this function quite wildly, but of course you have to remember all the abbreviations, because otherwise the whole thing does not help. Unfortunately, a small limitation of the native text replacement is that it cannot output multi-line items. So you are not able to save a signature with several lines as an abbreviation. Text with formatting and images cannot be realized with it either.

If you are looking for a tool that can do this and much more, take a look Text expander on. I've been using it for ages, then because of the subscription model it was free atext Hiked, but ended up back at Text Expander, because atext sometimes replaces abbreviations incorrectly, which is quite annoying in everyday life. I will soon write a more extensive article about atext and text expander, because both tools are pretty exciting.

Jen Kleinholz( Founder & Sir Apfelot )

Jens has been running the blog since 2012. He appears as Sir Apfelot for his readers and helps them with problems of a technical nature. In his free time he drives electric unicycles, takes photos (preferably with his iPhone, of course), climbs around in the Hessian mountains or hikes with the family. His articles deal with Apple products, news from the world of drones or solutions for current bugs.