Text snippets: how to build your own text library in Chrome

A text snippet is a piece of text you save once so you can reuse it whenever you want: a signature, a reply, an address or a link. People also call them canned responses or text templates. The handy part is giving each one a short shortcut, like /sig, so you can insert it in a second instead of typing it or hunting for it. The tool that does the swap is a text expander; we explain how it works in what is a text expander.

Almost everyone already has some kind of system, even if they don't call it that. These are the five most common:

None of them is bad: clipboard history is great for what you copied five minutes ago, and a document for long texts you rarely use. But what you repeat every week is best kept one shortcut away, right where you type. More details in our guides to text shortcuts on Mac and Windows and clipboard managers.

A simple rule: if you've typed the same thing three times this month, it deserves a snippet. To find them, keep a note open for a week and jot down every text you type for the second time. These show up on almost every list:

Many texts are identical except for two or three details: the name, the amount, a date. Instead of saving ten versions, save one with variables, blanks you fill in when you insert it. For example, the /quote snippet: “Hi {{input:Name}}, please find attached the quote for {{input:Project}}, for a total of {{input:Amount}}. It's valid for {{dropdown:Validity|15 days|30 days|60 days}}.”

When you type the shortcut, NexoPad shows a small form with those blanks and a list to choose the validity. Other variables fill themselves in, like {{date}} (today's date) or {{cursor}} (leaves the cursor where you'll keep typing). They work on the free plan too; you'll find them all in the variables guide.

With ten snippets you don't need any order; with fifty, you do. Use folders for the topic or channel (Sales, Support, Personal) and tags for things that cut across folders, like spanish or urgent. In NexoPad, each snippet has its folder (General by default) and its tags in the editor, and popup search looks at the shortcut, the name, the tags and the text. The free plan gives you 2 folders of your own besides General; Pro goes up to 50.

One more trick: with the globe icon in the editor, you choose which websites each snippet works on. That way /hello can be formal in Gmail and friendlier in WhatsApp Web. We explain it in the snippets guide.

As your library grows, forgetting a shortcut is normal. You don't need to open the popup: type // in any text field and a search box opens right there. Search by shortcut, name or a word from the text, pick one with the arrow keys and press Enter. If you don't type anything, your most used snippets come first.

The other route is Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on Mac), which works on any page and searches snippets, notes and links at once. If you were typing in a field, the snippet goes there; if not, it's copied.

An outdated snippet looks worse than writing from scratch: old prices, broken links, the name of someone who left. Review them every few months; five minutes is enough.

Delete what you don't use. Sort the list by most used and you'll quickly see which snippets you never touch.

Change each text in one place. If your address or prices change, you fix the snippet and it's right everywhere. It syncs with your account in the browsers where you sign in (on the free plan, one at a time).

Bring what you already have. If you're coming from Text Blaze, TextExpander or another app, you can import your shortcuts from the web dashboard with the variables already converted; if they're in a document, use the importer's CSV template. Still comparing? See NexoPad vs Text Blaze.

If everyone writes their own replies, customers get different versions of the same message, and every change has to be passed on to everyone. Gmail templates don't help: each person has their own.

With NexoPad's Teams plan ($12 per user per month, for 3 to 25 people), the whole team uses the same library. In the editor you choose whether a snippet is Personal or Team. Each team snippet can be visible to the whole company or to just one department, like Support or Sales, and if you want, editors' changes wait for an admin to approve them. If Marta improves the returns reply, her whole team gets the new version.

NexoPad works inside your browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera and Brave). Your shortcuts don't work in desktop programs like Word or Thunderbird, and there's no mobile app. It isn't a clipboard history either: it doesn't record what you copy, only the texts you choose to save. If you need shortcuts outside the browser, the best text expanders for Chrome covers the tools that do that.