- Series: Simple accessibility hints
- Simple: Enlarging Text
- Simple: Bigger Mouse Pointer
- Simple: Alert Sounds You Can See
- Simple: The Computer Tells You The Time
- Simple: Show Icons in open/save dialag box
- Simple: Zoom in to see screen details more easily
- Simple: Word Completion
- Make iTunes Easier To See and Use
- Simple Keyboard Shortcuts To Save You Time
You’re probably not aware, but Mac OS X has a simple type of word completion built right into it! It’s available in nearly every program you use, and nearly every text box you need to type in. It’s far from perfect – it doesn’t offer definitions to help you choose between possible words for example – but it’s here and it’s free and anybody can use it.
The trick is simply to type the start of your word and press escape (some keyboards may require you to press option-escape). You’ll see a list of all possible endings like this:
You can select the desired word by double-clicking with the mouse, or using the arrow keys to highlight the word you want and pressing enter.
- Ricky Buchanan
Philippe May 21, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Oh that’s great ! .. And it even works in localised version of Mac OS X ! .. I have just tested it on a French system and it works perfectly !
Terry November 18, 2008 at 2:59 am
I can’t get this to work, using Word. Any suggestions?
Ricky Buchanan November 18, 2008 at 5:24 pm
@Terry: Unfortunately it won’t work with Microsoft Word because the Microsoft people don’t follow the regular Apple standards when writing their Mac versions. If you need to use it with a word processor, it works in iWork’s “Pages” word processor, and in TextEdit – perhaps they can do the job?
mk September 26, 2009 at 3:31 am
mmm this no longer works for me (10.5.8)
Dan Gildea September 21, 2010 at 3:24 am
Actually, it’s not “auto” word completion, just plain old word completion.
If it were automatic, like in programs for physically disabled people, or like how the iPhone/iPads work, the guessed words would pop up as you write. You wouldn’t have to hit any additional keys to make it work.
Ricky Buchanan September 24, 2010 at 11:37 pm
@Dan: You are, of course, totally correct about the non-automaticness of the word completion. I shall edit the page headline to reflect this and then *headdesk* a bit because I can’t figure out how I thought it was automatic…