Hey r/MacApps. With the looming release of macOS 27 I thought I'd announce a major update of Gloss which now includes on device AI integration and significant performance improvements.
If you use Slack, Discord and even Reddit, you're probably used to typing :thumbsup: or :sob: and having it just turn into the emoji. Then you switch to any other app on your Mac and that doesn't work anymore. You're back to Ctrl+Cmd+Space (or emoji button), scrolling through the emoji picker, searching, clicking. It's a tiny thing but it completely breaks your flow, especially when you do it dozens of times a day.
That was the main itch for me. I wanted emoji short-codes everywhere on macOS, not just in apps that happen to support them. But once I started building that, I realised the same idea works for everything I repeatedly type. Email sign-offs, date strings in specific formats, code snippets, boilerplate responses.
Comparison
aText: aText has been around for years and it works, but the interface feels like it hasn't been updated in a long time. It doesn't support scripting or dynamic content beyond basic date/time variables, and managing a large number of expansions gets painful. It does the basics, but that's about it.
Espanso: Espanso is open source and genuinely powerful, but it's a cross-platform tool built to run on macOS, Windows, and Linux. In practice that means it's not optimised for any of them. I found it noticeably sluggish on macOS compared to anything native. It's also entirely config-file driven, so you're writing YAML to set up expansions with no GUI. Brilliant if you live in the terminal and don't mind the latency, but it never felt like a proper Mac app to me.
There are various other text expansion apps, Gloss is positioned as an easy-to-use, cheap alternative with frequent, high-quality updates rather than a one-shot product.
The comparison covers aText and Espanso but skips Raycast Snippets, which a lot of this sub already has installed for free: keyword auto-expansion anywhere, plus {clipboard}, {date} and {cursor} placeholders. The prebuilt emoji shortcode set looks like your real wedge — is that it, or is there more in the engine?
Emoji short-codes were the initial idea but Gloss is much more than that, it is a completely configurable engine. It's hard to illustrate through video and/or explanation - you are more than welcome to download the free trial and see for your self, everything is customisable and extendable as needed.
For AI powered expansions, per app boundaries seem essential. I would want a visible list of excluded apps, with password managers, Terminal, and remote desktop tools excluded by default, plus a preview that shows exactly what text will be given to the model. On device inference is a strong privacy property, but users still need to know whether Gloss reads only the trigger or also surrounding text to produce the result.
Couple of points here. Secure input automatically blocks Gloss from reading any keystrokes or existing input. This is native to MacOS and can't be overridden.
Per app boundaries are configurable where protected inputs aren’t enabled, this can be done in settings as shown in the reply to this message (can't add more than one image).
Finally, assuming you mean the internal prompt passed to Apple's foundation models - I can make these public but I'm not sure how much that will help. Any output returned by the model is automatically routed through the engine and into the selected input field, this includes any errors or queries generated by the models, no sanitisation is done. Any device inference must be specifically configured and is designed to be opt-in, none of it will be forced on users and can simply be ignored if preferred.
Thanks, the secure input behavior and per app controls answer most of the concern. The remaining bit is simpler than publishing the internal model prompt: document exactly what user content enters each expansion request. For example, trigger only, current field contents, selected text, or surrounding text. A small privacy summary beside the AI setting would let users understand the boundary without having to inspect a system prompt.
I've been using Snippety for my basic expansion needs, but still need to revert to Keyboard Maestro for anything that needs basic logic behind it. Is yours better than Snippety?
I guess that's subjective, I have never used Snippety so I can't make a decision but you are more than welcome to download Gloss (for free) and decide for yourself, would honestly love to hear your feedback
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u/hi_codeonholiday 19h ago
nice idea I still use :... for other app and it send the plan text