If you have used Apple’s iOS 8 and have enjoyed the new QuickType keyboard that is included with it, then you might be happy to know a similar service that is available in OS X has gained this function in OS X Yosemite.

QuickType is a word suggestion feature that allows you to quickly complete sentences by tapping on one of three suggested words. The suggestions that QuickType offers are contextually based, and therefore will change depending not only on the starting letters you have entered, but also on the context of the sentence you have already typed.

This service has its uses, and if you have become accustomed to it then you might find comfort in knowing the service has made its way into OS X Yosemite.

For a while, OS X has contained a word-completion feature, where by typing a few letters of a word and pressing the escape key you will get a list of possible word completions to use; however, so far this list has been a dumb alphabetical list, which has limited its uses. In Yosemite, this structure has been changed to essentially be the same as the QuickType suggestions, so now when you open this list you get a series of smart suggestions to use.

As with the QuickType keyboard, the suggestions allow you to throw together some ridiculous and funny phrases, but more importantly allow you to better use the suggested word list.

While enhanced, accessing the word suggestions in OS X is still the same: Simply press the escape key whenever you want a suggestion for a word, or for completing a partially-typed word, and a menu will pop up at your cursor with all of the options that OS X thinks are relevant. With the menu open, you can use the arrow keys to highlight a desired word, followed by pressing the space bar, tab key, or enter key to place it in your text.

Even though its main use might seem to be for suggestions while typing, another approach to using word suggestions is for reviewing text, where if you find a word in a phrase and want to use an alternative, you can highlight it and press Escape, to get a list of relevant alternatives that could work.