Tot text editor adds Shortcuts support on both iPhone and Mac

Tot On Mac (Image credit: The Iconfactory)

What you need to know

Tot has been updated to add support for Shortcuts.
Shortcuts support is available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
The update also includes performance improvements and more.

Tot, a popular text editor for Phone, iPad, and Mac, has added support for Shortcuts in its new version 1.3 update. The shortcuts will work across all three platforms, too.

Tot is "an elegant, simple way to collect & edit text across your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It's your tiny text companion!" It's somewhere you can save little snippets of text or notes with each note represented by a colored dot. Pick a dot to see the note and begin typing — it's simple, and now you can manipulate those notes — called dots for obvious reasons — using a shortcut.

Tot now supports Shortcuts! Get and set text automatically, query for info, and more. Actions work on both macOS and iOS for cross-platform automation.

Tot 1.3 on macOS also includes Smart Icons, great for folks who love Command-Tab. Learn more https://t.co/K6bQlGMgch pic.twitter.com/PNgZzGvBAcTot now supports Shortcuts! Get and set text automatically, query for info, and more. Actions work on both macOS and iOS for cross-platform automation.

Tot 1.3 on macOS also includes Smart Icons, great for folks who love Command-Tab. Learn more https://t.co/K6bQlGMgch pic.twitter.com/PNgZzGvBAc— Tot (@tot_app) March 25, 2022 March 25, 2022

There are Shortcuts actions available to Tot users thanks to this update:

Get the text from any one of the dots
Set the text for any dot
Add text to the beginning or end of a dot
Query a dot for additional information, including line/word/character counts, a JSON representation, and more
You can also switch which dot is showing in the UI

In a blog post announcing the new update and functionality, developer The Iconfactory noted that the update has helped make Tot a new scratchpad for automation, something that seems to describe it very well indeed.

Tot's actions let the app be a convenient place to put the output from one of your shortcuts (when creating a file is overkill). It's also a great way to collect and prepare text as input for a workflow. In short, Tot has become a scratchpad for automation. And because the actions are identical on macOS and iOS, your customizations work anywhere.

The latest release also includes performance improvements and interface refinements across the board and the update is now available for download on all platforms. Tot is a free download on the Mac and a paid download on iOS. $19.99 gets you both the iPhone and iPad versions of Tot.

If you're looking for somewhere to store text without all the fuss of some other text editors in the App Store, this is definitely one of the best iPhone, iPad, and Mac options out there.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.