When was the last time you looked up from your keyboard? What was it like? And how long could you pause before hitting the keys again with your fingers?

If you’re a writer, sales or customer success rep, marketer, recruiter—or virtually any other category of professional today—chances are you’re glued to a screen and a keyboard for the better part of your day. And it’s likely that a lot of your typing is repetitive.

You’re emailing the same pitch to prospects and candidates, sending the same thank you messages to each customer, and copy-pasting the same template for your meeting notes, blog posts, or memos.

Newsflash: There’s a faster way to type. Letting a virtual typing assistant i.e. an auto text expander take it over for you is a great way to maximize your productivity and reduce typing fatigue.

Let’s find out how you can do that.

What is an auto text expander?

An auto text expander is a productivity tool that gives users freedom from repeatedly typing or copy-pasting the same thing everywhere they work. 

It allows users to set up shortcuts or abbreviations for words, phrases, and even large chunks of text that they commonly use. These abbreviations are then expanded into the full text with just a few keystrokes. For example, using an auto text expander, you will just need to type o/eml every time you want to share your email address with someone and it will automatically expand to jane.doe@gmail.com. Quick and easy as that!

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The combination of the shortcut (o/eml) and the actual text (the email address, in this case) is called a snippet. Using snippets can save you a lot of time and effort, especially if your work involves copious amounts of writing or typing. 

Why use an auto text expander?

Apart from the generous time-savings and significant uptick in productivity, an auto text expander has multiple other benefits that make using it a no-brainer.

Here are some of the biggest benefits of using an auto text expander:

1. Automate routine emails and messages. Send everyday emails and messages without lifting a finger. Tackle repetitive queries faster, without wasting time typing manual replies.
   
   
2. Personalize preset or canned replies instantly. Many auto text expanders come with dynamic variables that let you customize canned messages for each recipient, without needing to type the whole thing over from scratch.
   
   
3. Create shared templates for your coworkers and teams. You can use auto text expanders to build a repository of consistent and reusable communication templates for everyone with snippets that can be shared across your workspace to save everyone time and keep messages consistent.
   
   
4. Enjoy faster response times. Templated responses help customer support teams to address queries faster. Faster response times and accurate replies translate into lower waiting times and higher customer retention.
   
   
5. Better quality and accuracy of information. With auto text expanders and readymade snippets, chances of making mistakes including inconsistencies in information, grammatical errors, and typos reduce significantly.

Auto text expanders work across multiple browsers and operating systems, so finding one that fits your needs isn’t a challenge either. Here are the top text expansion apps for Mac and Windows, for instance. 

Sold on these benefits? 

Now it’s time to experience them for yourself using our recommended auto text expanders for Firefox.

Top auto text expanders to try on Firefox in 2023

Here is a list of 7 of the top-rated and reviewed auto text expanders for Firefox.

1. OSlash

With OSlash you can create, save, and use powerful snippets to ship code, address customer complaints, shoot cold emails, gather feedback, and close business deals 30x faster. It can be used to create highly customizable, dynamic templates and canned responses. It also doubles up as a URL management and knowledge management tool for your workplace.

Top features:

• Create and format snippets with rich text and images across all browser apps
• Create custom keyboard shortcuts to find, open, and share URLs instantly
• Locate the right snippet easily with a handy input widget 
• Highlight anything on the web and convert it into a snippet in one click
• Gain one-touch access to your shortcuts, snippets, tabs, and activity

Also available for: macOS, ‍Chrome, Safari, Edge, Brave, and iOS (coming soon)

Recommended reading: Embrace faster messaging and better user interactions with OSlash text expander

2. Briskine

Briskine’s auto text expander extension for Firefox lets you write emails and messages faster by creating powerful and customizable text templates for Outlook, Gmail, and LinkedIn, among others. You can insert the text templates using shortcuts and even personalize them effortlessly via custom variables.

Top features:

• Template sharing and syncing that keeps teams on the same page, literally
• Insert shortcuts directly from your email client if you forget them
• Add tags to your shortcuts and color-code them for easy organization and discoverability

Also available for: Chrome, Safari, Edge, Opera

3. TextExpander

TextExpander is a long-standing industry incumbent popular with everyone from freelancers to conglomerates alike. 

One of its biggest USPs is the extensive library of templates available within its Public Groups. TextExpander users can subscribe to any of its Public Groups to take advantage of ready-made snippets across a wide variety of use-cases. 

Top features:

• Share snippet groups with your circle and across devices
• Get free app updates on all plans
• Auto-subscribe users to snippets and get snippet statistics

Also available for: macOS, Chrome

4. Clippings

Clippings is a web extension with the help of which you can eliminate repetitive typing and copy-pasting of frequently-entered text on Firefox and Thunderbird. 

Top features:

• Create a clipping from selected text in a form field or web page body
• Save the web page address (URL) with the new clipping
• Highlight important clippings via colored labels
• Autocomplete menu and shortcuts for faster insertion of clippings 
• Built-in placeholders for variables such as date, time, clipping name, user agent, etc. to customize clippings

Also available for: Thunderbird

5. Espanso

Espanso is a free and open-source text expander tool that offers all the basic functionalities you expect from an autotext app. The tool uses a code-based method to create shortcuts which might take some getting used to. 

Top features

• Custom forms to include dynamic inputs such as dates
• Ability to run scripts from a snippet
• “Endless extensibility” via Packages: Packages are collections of snippets put together by the Espanso community for writing non-standard text including language accents, mathematical symbols, scientific notations, emojis, and more. 
• Cross-platform support for Mac, Windows, and Linux: You only need one main config file to sync the same shortcuts everywhere.

Also available for: Windows, macOS, Linux, Chrome

6. Keysmith

Keysmith is a “browser extension and Mac app pair that lets you create custom keyboard shortcuts for any app or website”. It’s not just a text expander but an automation app that can replace and speed up most workflows involving a mouse and a keyboard with smart macros.

Top features:

• Record any workflow on your system using Keysmith to watch the app learn and automate it for you
• Create hotkeys that perform all the typing, clicking, and browsing for you, just the way you want
• Go ahead and forget hotkeys: Search macros by name to run them
• Supports AppleScript for creating more complex automations

Also available for: Mac

7. Auto Text Expander

Auto Text Expander for Firefox is a port of the Chrome Extension, Magical, that has been released under the MIT license. You can use it to expand shortcuts into full-fledged texts across over 10,000 apps on the web. 

Top features

• Populate sheets, messages, and forms without switching between tabs and copy-pasting data
• Search shortcuts seamlessly with tags or type // to activate a dropdown for shortcut discovery
• Create and lookup your shortcuts anywhere on the web with the Magical Panel
• Create unlimited shortcuts with unlimited character count per shortcut

Also available for: Chrome, Edge

With so many options, how do you decide which one to choose? You can take the hard way: Read up, research, and compare the features and user reviews of each text expander we listed above. Or you could…

Choose the best auto-text expander for Firefox: OSlash

And save yourself all the hassle. There’s nothing OSlash can’t do, whether it is creating boilerplate responses for customer queries and FAQs or automatically expanding your URLs and taking you to the destination page instantly.

OSlash is already saving over 4000 users up to 30 hours every month wasted on repetitive typing and searching for the right information. And it can do the same for you and your teammates.

Still skeptical? Try it out and witness the magic of auto text expansion across all your apps, right away. It’s free to get started. 

There’s no excuse to spend your precious time on busywork anymore!