Context I’m currently developing a chat-based app that requires the implementation of coping messages. Essentially, when a user long-presses a message bubble, an edit menu will appear with the option to “Copy.” This feature is a common element across most chat applications. For the purpose of this article, let’s assume that all message bubbles are constructed using a subclass of UITextView called MessageTextView. To make the “Copy” option appear on a long-press gesture, we’ll first need to add the appropriate gesture recognizer: ...

Alfred allows you to save your frequently used text clips as Snippets. Over the past few years I’ve created hundreds of them. There’s one problem. Alfred snippets only work on your Mac. Today we’ll focus on how we can convert them into macOS snippets. That way, you’ll be able to use them across all your Apple devices! How Alfred stores snippets as a Zip archive. On macOS, you can open it with the Archive Utility app that’s shipped with the system. After successfully exporting it, you’ll need to convert it from Alfred’s data format to the one used by the system snippets. macOS allows to import keyboard snippets in bulk with Property List format files (plist). ...