How to use iPhone text replacement shortcuts

If you’ve spent any time typing out a message on an iPhone, you’re familiar with autocorrect and its shortcomings. We know them. We ducking hate them. But there’s a related, less well-known feature on your iPhone called text replacement that is kind of an all-purpose autocorrect. In fact, this is already enabled by default — any time you type “omw,” it will automatically change to “On my way!” before your eyes. 

Here’s how to set up your own shortcut phrases with text replacement:

Now the bigger question: what should you use it for? Common suggestions include setting up shortcuts for your email address and phone number. For the latter, the phrase could be something like @@ or eml – something you’ll remember but won’t trigger unwanted text replacement. 

Or you can go a less practical, more fun direction and use text replacement to automatically add a (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ or a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ without resorting to copy / paste or typing all of those characters out. You can use standard emoji, too.

Or maybe you’d just like to be able to drop a casual “omw” into a text without it being converted to an enthusiastic “On my way!” If that’s the case, here’s how you can remove the shortcut:

That’s it! You’re on your way to making your life a little easier.

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