LetMe Type is a small program that resides in the system tray, monitors what you type and collects information about your most frequently used words.
It will then use this information to provide a little popup window after you type in 2 or 3 characters, containing a range of words to choose from that it can automatically complete for you.
LetMe Type can be used within any application, or the application(s) of your choice.
Most of us are familiar with the autocomplete function when keying in a search term in Google. LetMe Type is a similar service that is available anywhere. Here’s a summary of how it works:
- The small, system-tray resident app monitors what you type and the frequency you use particular words.
- It will then provide a pop-up with numbered options (see screenshot). You can quickly select the word you want using the number keys on your keyboard.
- The downside is that LetMe Type will also learn your misspelled words as well, requiring you to manually go through the list and delete these.
This application is highly customizable:
- Instead of learning as-you-type, you can simply import a list of words. For an open source resource that can help you, this page might help.
- You can switch learning on/off. This is useful when you are happy with the list of learned/imported words.
- You can set the desired number of suggestions.
- If you would prefer it to only suggest long words you can do that. (This is done by adjusting how many added characters minimum the suggested word must have).
- You can tell LetMe Type to only kick-in within certain apps, or not to kick in within certain apps.
- You can tell it to not suggest certain words (for example passwords – although this will require that you tell it what these excluded words are).
But how well does it work in practice?
After using this program for a week I must admit I have mixed feelings about it. While I like the idea of having autocomplete word options flash on the screen, their usefulness in practice was rather limited. To be fair, this was probably due to the fact that I am not used to interrupting my typing to select words (I am also a very fast typist and a decent speller). But the real drawback was that LetMe Type was learning all kinds of spelling mistakes, and I did not appreciate having to continually go in and fix these.
Eventually, I deleted the learned word list, imported a list of correctly spelled terms, and set LetMe Type to only suggest long words. This worked out much better, although the list of words took quite a bit of work to set up. I recommend LetMe Type as follows:
- If you deal with a lot of technical terms/jargon that you can teach LetMe Type and have it fill them in for you whenever needed
- If you would appreciate spelling assistance, and only if you pre-load a list of correctly spelled words. This
- For the sheer coolness factor.
Version tested: 1.81
Compatibility: Windows 9x/2k/XP; no info on Vista.
Go to the program home page to get the latest version (approx 590K). Note that the developer has ceased development of this program, and there probably will not be any new versions coming along.
