By Jason Snell

August 19, 2016 2:02 PM PT

Quick Tip: Auto-expanding email address

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

We get asked for our email addresses a lot, most commonly in login windows on websites. I’ve saved a lot of time by attaching mine to an auto-expanding text shortcut on both iOS and macOS. No additional software is required, though if you have a text-expanding utility like TextExpander you could use that instead.

On the Mac, go to the Keyboard pane in System Preferences, and click on the Text tab. Put a shortcut in the Replace column—mine’s jjs—and your email address in the With column. On iOS, you can find the same command in the Settings app, under General > Keyboards > Text Replacement.

In theory, iCloud syncs your text replacements between all your devices. In practice, I find that it sometimes does this, sometimes utterly fails at it, and sometimes ancient shortcuts I deleted years ago spontaneously regenerate when I least expect it.

If you appreciate articles like this one, support us by becoming a Six Colors subscriber. Subscribers get access to an exclusive podcast, members-only stories, and a special community.