Fill-ins and variants

Some snippets are almost the same every time, except for a detail: the customer's name, an order number, a product. Fill-ins and variants let one snippet cover all of those.

Add a fill-in

A fill-in is a word in curly braces inside a snippet's text, like Hi {name}, your order {order} is on its way.

1. Open the snippet in Snippets, or click New snippet.
2. Put the cursor where the detail goes and click one of the chips under the text: {name}, {order}, {app} or {date}. For anything else, click + Custom and give it a name, or simply type it in braces.
3. Click Save.

Fill it in as you type

When you type a snippet with fill-ins in Chrome, a small box opens at the cursor before anything is inserted. Type each value, or open the list next to it to pick a value you saved before, then click Insert. Values you add to that list stay there for next time.

With Premium, Bettertext also fills them from the email you're answering, like the customer's name, so often you only check and press Insert. The text in the box can be edited before it goes in.

Variants: one snippet, a value for each case

Variants are for a fill-in with a fixed list of values. Say you answer for several products and sign every reply "Mike, product support". Instead of one snippet per product:

1. Write the snippet once with a fill-in, for example Mike, {app} support.
2. Below the text, click the {app} chip with the arrow (▾) and choose Add variants.
3. Add a row for each product: a Name (what you see in the list) and a Value (what goes in the text).
4. Click Save.

In Chrome, the snippet then opens a picker with the value already chosen from the email when Bettertext can tell, or you choose it. Press Enter to insert it. With Expand without a space on, the picker doesn't take over your typing: keep typing and it closes, so you can type a longer shortcut instead.

Tip: Draft it with AI sets variants up for you. Mention the values in your description, for example "app can be Importify, Editorify or Popify".

On iPhone, iPad and in Mac apps

Apple's text replacements can't ask for a value, so there a fill-in stays exactly as written, like {name}. Variants are handled for you: with Also on Apple devices as separate snippets on, each variant becomes its own snippet on your Apple devices, such as ;sig-importify. Click one of those shortcuts in the editor to give it a name you prefer, like ;sigi. See Snippets on your Mac, iPhone and iPad.