Greetings. Text replacement is a simple, easy way to program strings of letters to automatically expand out to words and phrases, such of turning btw into by the way, or o m g into Oh my God, when typing on your IOS or MacOS device.
I have an enormous text replacement data base. Over the course of many sleepless nights I programmed over 10,000 words and phrases, each with its own shortcut.
At the beginning of 2017, I bought a Macbook Pro, logged onto iCloud, and immediately began having severe typing slowdowns in Apple Mail, Safari, Text Edit and Pages. Today, after going for more than a year in circles with Apple technical support, I finally figured out that the problem was my enormous text replacement data base.
You can turn text replacement on or off in your menu bar edit pulldown under substitutions. Text replacement is the last substitution option.
The problem shows up when using VoiceOver as follows.
While you are typing, especially if you type very fast, VoiceOver begains repeating the word "busy". If your text replacement data base is large enough, and/or if you type fast enough, VoiceOver will keep saying busy busy busy for many seconds before it will let you move the cursor, continue typing, or do anything at all. If this happens t you, go to your menu bar, edit, substitutions, and arrowed down to text replacement and unchecked it. The busy busy problem will immediately vanish.
I don't know if anyone els is OCD or has sleepless nights like me, but if you ever encounter "busy busy busy" while you're typing, turn of text replacement, or spend a year on the phone with Apple technical support. Your call, but if I had to do it over again, I would turn off text replacement. Joy! Bruce
Comments
Unacceptable
This is unacceptable but sadly predictable behavior on macOS. I bet you this doesn't happen to sighted users. If it did, Apple would have a fix out immediately! Have you tried sending feedback to Apple's Accessibility team? They probably won't listen, since 99% of the issues I've sent to them regarding the Mac and VoiceOver seem to fall on deaf ears. Still, it's worth a try.
Finally
I encountered a strange issue with my maxed-out M2 Ultra Mac. For weeks, I couldn't figure out the cause of the problem. I use TextExpander alongside macOS's Text Replacements, and I had an exact copy of my Text Replacements in both. After quitting TextExpander, the issue persisted. It wasn’t until later that I had a moment of clarity and thought, “Why not try removing the Text Replacements entirely?” I wasn’t sure if I could disable them, so I made a backup copy of all my entries. However, when I tried importing them back, it didn't work—my backup file was around 800KB in size.
At first, I never considered the Text Replacements as the source of the problem, simply because I thought, "Wouldn't Apple have caught this if it was a known issue?" But once I removed all of the Text Replacements, the improvement was immediate. It was like a new computer—fast, smooth, and no lag. My machine no longer lagged when typing multiple words or entire sentences. As someone who types quickly, I rely on Text Replacements to speed up my workflow, but it was clear that the service was poorly optimized.
Interestingly, not all applications were affected. TextMate, for example, ran flawlessly, while Sublime Text had some issues, though not as severe as browsers based on Chromium. For anyone who needs a large number of text replacements, I’d recommend using TextExpander (which I’m not affiliated with). I’ve kept it as a backup because it doesn’t seem to have the same performance issues in other apps.
After figuring out the root cause, I searched online for reports of lagging cursors linked to Text Replacements, and I found just one article that mentioned the issue. There are apparently many people experiencing cursor lag, but no clear solution or even an explanation is offered. I’m not sure if all of these users have thousands of replacements, but I suspect there’s a lot of poorly written code in Apple’s ecosystem. Just take a look at the Console app, and you’ll see a constant stream of errors and warnings—sometimes up to 100 per second. This is not something a regular user should encounter, and it’s a sign of bad design. In contrast, a properly installed Linux system doesn’t generate a flood of log files. Still, I do enjoy macOS in many ways, and I do have a powerful M2 workstation. However, there are times when I have to reboot the system weekly because it becomes unstable and refuses to run essential programs without errors (which usually only show up in the Console app).
In short, if you’re experiencing cursor lag or delayed text input on macOS, try removing or disabling your Text Replacements. It might just fix the problem.
Does this translate to iOS?
Because if so, that would explain much ...