macOS Text replacements issue

[Dave Rutlidge]

A recent update (or tip, possibly) gave me the option to turn on macOS text replacements within iTerm2 (I am using Build 3.6.7beta2). That seemed like a good idea, but it really wasn't, and it's causing me headaches. But I can't find how to turn it off again.

The biggest issue is that I have a text replacement of ll → [my landline number]. This works fine most of the time, but iTerm2 is way too aggressive expanding it. Whereas everything else only expands ll when it's a single word (and usually gives the option to deny the expansion), iTerm2 always expands it. This causes a lot of issues, for example in "dnf install …".

Please, how do I turn it off again?

[George Nachman]

You can disable text replacements by running:

defaults delete com.googlecode.iterm2 NoSyncTextReplacements

I didn’t realize that text replacements did that. I’ll see about making it follow the same rule. Unfortunately I can’t use Apple’s code to do it and I had to roll my own. 

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[John Simpson]

On Feb 1, 2026, at 11:05, 'Dave Rutlidge' via iterm2-discuss <iterm2-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> A recent update (or tip, possibly) gave me the option to turn on macOS text replacements within iTerm2 (I am using Build 3.6.7beta2). That seemed like a good idea, but it really wasn't, and it's causing me headaches. But I can't find how to turn it off again.
>
> The biggest issue is that I have a text replacement of ll → [my landline number]. This works fine most of the time, but iTerm2 is way too aggressive expanding it. Whereas everything else only expands ll when it's a single word (and usually gives the option to deny the expansion), iTerm2 always expands it. This causes a lot of issues, for example in "dnf install …".

I find it useful to use something "easy but unlikely" as a trigger. For example, ".ac." expands to "autocorrupt", and ".fa." expands to "frolicking autocorrect" (I'm not a huge fan of the iPhone's autocorrect mechanism, if it isn't obvious.) The triggers are easy to remember, they're short enough to not "slow me down" when tap-typing, and they're not something I'm going to trigger by accident.

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John Simpson - KG4ZOW
https://jms1.net/