TypeTab 1.2.0: see what it saves you, and switch it off where Tab has a job
A Stats pane and a live menu bar counter show the keystrokes and time TypeTab saves you. Per-app Suggest and Learn switches, a Settings window that looks like a Mac app, and a fix for fresh installs that failed to download the model.
TypeTab 1.2.0 is out. It answers the two questions I heard most since 1.1: "is it actually saving me time?" and "how do I keep it out of my terminal?" Both have a proper answer now, and Settings got the redesign it deserved.
See what it saves you
Every time you accept a suggestion, TypeTab counts the characters you didn't have to type. Click the menu bar icon and the first line tells you: Saved 1,284 keystrokes today. Click it and the new Stats pane opens with keystrokes saved, words completed, and time saved for today, the last 7 days, or all time, plus a 14-day chart.
Time saved is deliberately conservative. It assumes 40 words per minute of unassisted typing, the everyday adult average, so the number you see is a floor, not a brag. Counting happens on your Mac, and nothing but the counts is stored.
Turn it off in one app
Terminals, code editors, spreadsheets: places where Tab already has a job. Click the menu bar icon while you're in that app and choose Turn Off in Terminal. Suggestions stop there, and only there. Choose Turn On in Terminal to bring them back.
Settings has a new Apps pane for the fuller picture. Each app you add gets two checkboxes:
- Suggest: whether ghost text appears in that app.
- Learn: whether what you type there goes into your training data.
Untick Learn to keep an app out of your corpus while still getting suggestions. Untick Suggest for the reverse. The old exclusion list became the Learn column, so anything you had set up carries over. Password fields are never read, in any app, and that hasn't changed.
Settings that look like a Mac app
Six toolbar panes: General, Apps, Stats, Training Data, Model, and License. The window resizes to fit each pane and reopens on the one you used last. Labels line up the way System Settings does. Menu items have icons, the menu bar icon dims while TypeTab is paused, and the first-launch setup shows a green Granted the moment Accessibility is on.
Fixed: a fresh install could fail to download the model
Some first launches ended with "Repository not available locally" and no model ever arrived. The old network check reported "offline" for the first few milliseconds after launch, and treated hotspots and Low Data Mode as offline permanently. Fresh installs hit that window and gave up.
1.2.0 goes online first, verifies the cached files against the repo, and resumes an interrupted download, so a half-finished first launch heals itself on the next one. It only falls back to the cached copy when there's genuinely no network. The model also moved from the Caches folder to Application Support, where cleanup tools leave it alone. If a download does fail, the menu bar offers Retry Model Download instead of an error you can't act on.
How to update
Grab the latest version from the site, or brew upgrade typetab if you installed with Homebrew. Your license, settings, learned style, and the downloaded model carry over; the model moves to its new folder on first launch.
As always: everything runs on your Mac, nothing you type leaves it.