Speed up your typing and your emoji game with text replacements on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS

In this episode, Dave Nason demonstrates how to create and use text replacements, short snippets of text which are substituted with frequently used words, sentences, or emojis when typed, on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. This may be useful if you, for example, need to frequently give people directions to your home. Rather than manually type out the directions, you could configure a text replacement so that several sentences could be inserted simply by typing a few characters of your choosing. You may also wish to use it to speed up typing longer words, or even to type emojis that you use regularly.

On iOS and iPadOS, text replacements can be created and managed in Settings > General > Keyboard > Text replacement. Here, you can double-tap an item to edit it, or delete it using the "Delete" rotor action. To create a text replacement, double-tap the Add button in the upper right corner, type or paste the word, sentence, or emoji you want inserted in the "Phrase" field, type the text snippet in the "Shortcut" field, and double-tap Save.

On macOS, text replacements can be created and managed in System Settings > Keyboard > Text replacements. Navigate the table using the up and down arrow keys, Tab to individual cells to edit them, or delete them using the Remove button. To create a replacement, click the Add button, type the text snippet in the "Replace" field, type the text you want to be inserted in the "With" field, and click Add.

Assuming your devices are signed into the same Apple Account, text replacements are synced between them, allowing you to, for example, create text replacements on your Mac, and use them on your iPhone or iPad.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Dave: Hello there, David Nason here. I hope you are doing well. Today I wanted to give you a quick demo of how to use text replacements or typing shortcuts on both iOS and macOS. Text replacements are a really handy feature for speeding up your typing, helping you type out regular words or phrases or even you know, full on sentences that you want to type more quickly.

Dave: You can type as little as two characters as your shortcut and then you hit space or punctuation like a full stop or a comma and it will expand out into the word or phrase that you have set. So it's really handy. There's probably three key ways which I use it. One would be for kind of longer sentences that I need to type semi-regularly. So, for example, directions to my house.

Dave: If a friend is coming over or a taxi driver or a delivery person, that kind of thing. Rather than having to type out those directions each time I'm in that situation, I have a shortcut set up. So I type D-I-R-1. and I hit space and it will turn into those directions. I have one that's Dior2 as well, which is a more detailed version of those directions.

Dave: I also use it then, number two, for kind of regular words and phrases that I might use when I'm texting people or emailing. I borrow some of these from contracted Braille, others I have made up myself. So things like YD for yesterday, TM for tomorrow, TAFN for this afternoon, that kind of thing. Also, it can be useful for, say, your email address.

Dave: So I type GML and hit space and it will turn into my Gmail address. So if I'm filling in a form rather than having to type it all out. So really handy for those kind of day-to-day words and phrases that you might use. The third way I use it, and I love to use, is for emojis.

Dave: So if I want to type an emoji, instead of having to open the emoji keyboard, hunt for the one I want, or do a search for the one I want, or type words and hope it pops up on the suggestions toolbar, what I can just do is type out my shortcuts without even having to really think about it anymore. So if I want to type a smiling face, I go ESF and hit spacebar, and it turns into the smiling face emoji. or I can type E-T-U space and it'll turn into the thumbs up emoji.

Dave: If I want to say cheers to somebody or we're going out or something and I want to do clinking beer mugs, I go E-C-B-M space and it'll turn into the clinking beer mugs emoji. So I use E for emoji and then a kind of a code that I can remember for what that shortcut is. I sometimes do use words too. So E-balloon will turn into balloon emoji. So that kind of thing.

Dave: So I find this a really useful way to use text replacements to make my emoji typing that little bit easier. So how do we set these up? We're going to go over to the Settings app.

Dave: And then we are looking for General. There we go.

Dave: And then we're looking for keyboard. It's about two-thirds of the way down if you want to scroll or explore, or you can swipe down to it.

VoiceOver: Apple Caron, AirDrop, AirPlay, Picture, CarPlay, Autofill, Background, Date and Time, Dictionary, Fonts, Keyboard, Button.

Dave: There it is.

VoiceOver: Keyboards, 2, Button.

Dave: And then we're looking for a button called Text Replacement, and it is near the top, so just one or two swipes will get you there.

Dave/VoiceOver: Text Replacement, Button. There we go, so I'm going to select... Section Index, Adjustable.

Dave: And we're now in the text replacement screen. So what we're presented with here is an alphabetical list of all of the text replacements I've already created. I've got dozens of them, so there's loads here. For you, if you haven't done this before, of course, this will be blank or close enough. For memory, I believe Apple do preload one or two of these. But for me, like I say, I've got loads of them. So if I tap here, I've got AFN for afternoon.

Dave: ag again ag for again for example i could also use the scroll bar on the right to go down through the list alphabetically ag again section index adjustable b c d e selected let me go to e and we'll find some of the emoji ones i've created chocolate bar emoji ecb for chocolate bar There's the clinking beer mugs one I mentioned. So again, I can go through all of these.

Dave: If I wanted to edit one of these, I just double tap and it will open up the next screen and I can edit it. Or if I want to delete it, I would swipe up or down here because it's in the actions menu. There we go. So I could double tap now to delete it. Now to create a new one, we're going to look for the Add button, which is in the very top right of the screen. So you could go to the heading at the top and swipe right, or you can explore and find the Add button in the top of the screen.

VoiceOver: Add phrase text field is editing insertion point at start.

Dave: So we're now in the creation screen. The first text field is the phrase that you want to expand into or change into. So let's create one of our emoji ones. I'm going to go to the emoji keyboard. So we've got we're in a text field. We're in the phrase text field and the keyboard is on screen. So I'm going to find the emoji button in the bottom left of the keyboard.

VoiceOver: Emoji. Phrase text field is editing character mode insertion point at start.

Dave: And now I'm going to find the emoji search option.

VoiceOver: Man with a white cane. Search emoji. Text field.

Dave: There we go.

VoiceOver: Insertion point at end.

Dave: We're coming into the summer, so I might be sending this one a bit. I'm going to look for the smiling face with sunglasses emoji. So I'm going to type the word sunglasses.

VoiceOver: W. Whiskey. S. S. I. I. U. N. G. L. A. S. S. E. S. Okay, I'm going to find that text field again.

VoiceOver: text field is editing clear text button i'm going to swipe right to the results smiling face with sunglasses emoji there he is i'm going to double tap kind of made a sound there so let's just go and check the phrase text field again at the top create a shortcut that will phrase text field is editing smiling face with sunglasses emoji character mode insertion point dead end

Dave: Perfect, so smiling face with sunglasses emoji is now my phrase. Gonna swipe right from there to type in the shortcut that I want.

VoiceOver: Shortcut, optional, text field. Emoji search hidden. Shortcut, text field, is editing, optional, character mode, insertion point at start.

Dave: Why it says optional, I do not know. But this is where you type in the shortcut that will turn into your phrase. So again, I'm going to use my system, which is to type E for emoji.

Dave: And then I'm going to type Sierra.

Dave: And then I'm going to type SFS for smiling face sunglasses.

Dave: And let's check that.

VoiceOver: creates a shortcut that will automatically. Shortcut text field is editing. Fs, character mode, insertion. S, F, S, E, E, S, F, S. Perfect. Sierra.

Dave: So now when I'm in any text field on my device pretty much, I will be able to type E, S, F, S, hit space, and it will turn into the smiling face with sunglasses emoji. What I need to do first though is save it. So in the top right corner, I'll find the save button.

VoiceOver: Save button. Save. Keyboards, back button.

Dave: And that is now saved. And I can use that shortcut. So that's how you create it on iOS. Now let us pop over to the Mac and have a look at how we do it there. Okay, here we are now on the Mac side, where the process is actually very similar to that on iOS. So we're going to open up system settings. So I'll VOM to jump to the menu bar.

VoiceOver: Menu bar, Apple, Apple, about this system settings ellipsis.

Dave: Select system settings.

VoiceOver: Budget.xl, system window, sidebar, table, row three expanded.

Dave: Now on iOS, we found keyboard in under general, whereas on Mac, keyboard is its own top level menu. So I'm actually going to hit the K to jump down to keyboard in the main sidebar.

Dave: And then I'm going to go and interact with the keyboard scroll area.

Dave: And the button we're looking for, text replacements, is a bit further down in the menu here on Mac. So I'm going to use a heading that I can jump down to.

VoiceOver: Heading, text input.

Dave: And that is text input. And then I'm gonna VO right arrow a few times to get to the button.

VoiceOver: Input source, Irish. Edit, button, text replacements, button.

Dave: There we go, text replacements. Select that.

VoiceOver: Three items, table.

Dave: And we have a few items in here. We have the add button.

VoiceOver: Remove.

VoiceOver: Table.

Dave: And done. So this table is like on iOS where we had a list of all of our existing text replacements that we've created. And the really nice thing here is that... it is shared across all of your devices so they sync across all of your devices so all the ones i created on ios will appear on my mac anything i create on my mac will appear on ios so the one we created earlier on ios will be here in the table

Dave: so i'm going to interact with that table i'm going down a couple of times there's our acby for example via right arrow to the other column replacing that with accessibility go down a few more

Dave: afn go right with afternoon afternoon so you get the idea if i wanted to edit it i could select it or if i wanted to delete it as it's highlighted i would now un-interact out of table and vo left arrow to the remove button remove button and select that and that would delete it and as i say it would delete it both on the mac and on my ios or any ipad then have signed in on the same apple id so your text replacements sync across all of your devices which is a really nice feature

Dave: Now, if I wanted to create one from the Mac, I will V-O left arrow again to the add button.

VoiceOver: Add button. Four items.

Dave: And select that. screen again very similar to the one we had on iOS although they have the text fields the other way around so the first text field on the Mac side is the shortcut that you want to type in and then the next field is what you want to replace it with whereas on iOS you typed these in the other way around so what we want to create is

Dave: the phrase this evening and then the shortcut i want to use is just the letters t e so i'm going to type t e into the selection replaced t and then i'm going to go via right arrow with with edit text and i'm going to type this evening

Dave: And let's just via left arrow make sure I typed both of those in correctly.

VoiceOver: With. Tay. Contents selected.

Dave: Tay. So that's T-E.

VoiceOver: With. This evening.

Dave: Contents. Perfect. And then we're going to via right arrow to the add button.

VoiceOver: Cancel button. Add button. Add button.

Dave: And that one has now been created. I can now via right to the done button.

VoiceOver: Remove. Table. Done. Button.

Dave: There we go. Select done.

VoiceOver: Text replacements.

Dave: And we are done. So I'm going to close this window. And I'm going to go to text edit to demonstrate these text replacements in action. And we're going to use both the one we created on iOS and the one we just created here on Mac, as well as maybe a couple of other ones that I already have created. So let's go into text edit.

VoiceOver: Text edit.

Dave: let's say i'm going to use r u so the letter r and the letter u which i have turned into the words r u a r e space y o u so r u coming to my house and then we'll go this evening black t e this evening evening

Dave: and question mark and it turned te turned into this evening and then how about directions to my house so we'll go with d i or one space space t question mark and then we'll hit e s f s which was our smiling face with sunglasses smiling face with sunglasses So now we'll go back and read the full text that I wrote.

Dave: Perfect. So that was...

Dave: turned R U into letters into the words R U I turned T E into this evening I turned D I R 1 into the sentence giving directions to my house and E S F S into the smiling face with sunglasses

Dave: emoji so we got all of those text replacements much quicker and easier to type using those and i think where it's even more useful probably is on ios because the on-screen keyboard can be a little bit slower to type on so having loads of these set up can be really useful can really save you a lot of time and a lot of frustration so i really recommend this feature whether it's for common words for phrases and sentences you need to type out fairly regularly and like i said i love using it for the emojis

Dave: So I hope you found this useful and thanks a million. See you in the next one.