Most of us have been there where we need to repeatedly type in specific information, like contact details, business information, and other canned responses via texts, emails, documents, and so forth.
After the first few times, typing the same thing over and over can get mentally exhausting.
One way to address this is to use the Text Replacements feature baked into iOS. However, once you have more than a few Text Replacements added, it gets harder to remember the exact shortcuts to enter the desired phrase. Plus, Text Replacements don’t honor line breaks, making them pretty much useless for lengthy text entries with a few sentences.
To address this, we have built a super simple, lightweight (just 2 MB), and privacy-focused app called Snippets that lets you create and save unlimited keyboard shortcuts. It sits behind your stock iPhone keyboard, and tapping a shortcut automatically enters the full text you would have otherwise typed manually.
Snippets is app-agnostic, meaning it works across all apps where you can type, such as Messages, WhatsApp, Mail, Slack, Notes, X, ChatGPT, Gmail, Reddit, and YouTube.
You can use Snippets to save all kinds of repetitive text and reuse them whenever you need them. Give each saved text a clear, meaningful title, so you can find exactly what you need without having to remember shortcuts or special abbreviations like you would with traditional Text Replacements.
You can use Snippets for:
- Quick text replies to save common responses you frequently send in chats or WhatsApp messages.
- Email replies to keep frequently used personal, professional, or business responses ready to insert.
- Greetings and sign-offs (especially if you have family or colleagues who speak different languages).
- Canned responses such as “Thanks for reaching out! I’ll get back to you shortly” or “I’m currently unavailable. I’ll respond as soon as possible.”
- Customer support replies to store frequently used responses to common questions you regularly receive.
- Links and URLs so you can easily share your websites, product links, forms, documents, and such.
- Social media hashtags to save groups of frequently used hashtags and insert them all at once when creating a post. It’s a real time saver!
- Social media captions to keep reused descriptions, calls-to-action, or post templates.
- Addresses, contact details, company information.
- Any other repetitive text you find yourself typing over and over. You can save it in Snippets and reuse it whenever you need it.
All in all, Paste Snippets Keyboard is useful for both personal and professional communication, so you spend less time typing repetitive text and more time getting things done.
And we know that once you start using it, the number of snippets you save will quickly balloon. So we added a simple categories feature to organize your snippets and quickly find the text you want to use.
No upgrades or ads
Snippets is completely free to use with no ads, paid upgrades, recurring subscriptions, and such.
Private and secure
Whatever text and information you add to Snippets is saved right on your device. It’s never sent to us in any shape, way, or form.
How to set it up and use it
All you need to do is add Snippets as a keyboard (just like Apple pre-adds the Emoji keyboard). Then tap the globe icon to access your saved snippets, and tap one to insert it in the text field.
1) Download Snippets for free on your iPhone or iPad.
2) Open the app and tap Open Settings Now (or manually go to iOS Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards > Add New Keyboard > Snippets).
3) Tap Keyboards, enable Snippets Keyboard, and Allow Full Access.
4) Return to the Snippets app, and you’ll see three stock entries there. Tap one to edit and replace it with your own. Or swipe left to delete them, then tap the plus button (+) to create and save your own snippets. When creating, you can add them to an existing category or create a new category.
5) With everything set, open Messages, Notes, Mail, or another app and bring up the keyboard. Then, tap the globe icon to switch to Snippets or touch and hold the globe icon and select Snippets Keyboard – Snippets.
6) Tap a saved snippet to instantly insert the full phrase in your message, email, or text field.
7) Tap the globe icon to return to your main keyboard.
Export your snippets to another device or for backup
You can export all your added snippets in a couple of taps to import them on another iPhone or iPad or save for future backup.
This is our latest release…
We have been building helpful, privacy-focused iOS apps for over a decade now. And Snippets is the latest addition. You can check out all our apps on this App Store page.
Try Snippets and let us know what you think in the comments section below. All suggestions are welcome…