Four prompts, four keyboard shortcuts, zero retyping. That’s the whole system a Redditor in r/ChatGPTPromptGenius built using Apple’s built-in text replacement feature, and it’s the kind of small habit that saves real time every single day.
TL;DR: This Redditor set up Apple’s text replacement (Settings > Keyboard > Text Replacement) so a two-letter shortcut expands into full ChatGPT instructions, covering plain-English explainers, deep walkthroughs, rapid-fire chat mode, and a heads-up for voice-to-text messages.
The setup
Text replacement lives on every iPhone, iPad, and Mac, buried in a settings menu most people never open twice. Type a short trigger like “xpl” and it swaps in a full paragraph instantly, no copy-paste, no digging through notes app for the prompt you saved three weeks ago. Most people use this feature for addresses or email signatures, the boring stuff. This Redditor uses it for prompt engineering, and once you see the prompts, it makes total sense why that’s a smarter use of the feature than autofilling your zip code.
The appeal
The appeal here isn’t the prompts themselves, plenty of people have written variations of these. It’s the friction removal. A great prompt you have to retype (or hunt down and copy) every time is a prompt you’ll stop using within a week. A great prompt that’s two keystrokes away is one you’ll actually reach for on a Tuesday afternoon when you’re tired and just want the answer without thinking hard about how to phrase the question.
The four prompts
For plain-English explainers without dumbing things down:
Please explain in a way a complete layperson with no experience whatsoever in the thing I’m about to ask you can understand, all while still using the proper technical terms to ensure nothing is lost in translation, and also making sure your answer is as short as it can possibly be: [insert request here]
This one’s doing two jobs at once. It forces simple language and keeps the real terminology, so you’re not left guessing what the “simplified” version actually meant. Ask a normal question about, say, how a mortgage refinance works, and you’ll get an answer with words like “amortization” and “equity” still in it, just wrapped in sentences that don’t require a finance degree to parse. That matters more than it sounds like it should. A lot of AI explainers strip out the real terms entirely, which leaves you unable to Google follow-up questions or talk to an actual professional using the right vocabulary later.
For when that’s still not enough:
Please explain every single detail of every single part of every single thing comprising your answer to me; I’m learning this from the ground up so I’d like to know both the theory and application behind everything. Thanks!
Stack this on top of the first prompt and you get a full teaching mode instead of a quick answer. Use it when you’re trying to actually understand a subject rather than just get an answer you can repeat back. Someone learning how neural networks work, for example, could combine both prompts and get an explanation that starts with plain language, keeps the correct terms like “backpropagation” and “gradient descent,” and then unpacks the theory behind each one instead of skimming past it.
For faster back-and-forth conversations:
I want to have a fluid back-and-forth conversation with you for the time being. You can think for as long as you normally would, but for your written answers, please make them quick and concise for now so we can keep the discussion rapid until I say you can write at normal lengths again. Thanks!
This keeps the model’s reasoning intact but trims the output, which matters if you’re using a “thinking” tier that tends to write essays by default. It’s especially useful when you’re brainstorming out loud, working through a decision in real time, or debugging something step by step and don’t want a wall of text after every single message. Drop this in at the start of a session and the whole conversation feels more like texting a smart friend than reading a report.
For voice-to-text messages:
This is a voice-to-text transcribed message, so there may be errors or oddities in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. If anything seems confusing or otherwise incorrectly transcribed, ask me to clarify.
Small prompt, but it stops the model from confidently answering a garbled transcription instead of flagging it. Anyone who’s dictated a message while walking or driving knows how mangled voice-to-text can get, homophones swapped, punctuation missing entirely, whole phrases turned into nonsense. Without this heads-up, the model just guesses at what you meant and runs with it. With it, you get a model that pauses and asks instead of confidently answering the wrong question.
Use cases
- 📚 Learning a new skill and want the technical terms without the jargon wall
- 💬 Running long research sessions where short, fast replies keep momentum
- 🎙️ Talking to ChatGPT hands-free while cooking, driving, or multitasking
Prompt of the day
Please explain in a way a complete layperson with no experience whatsoever in the thing I’m about to ask you can understand, all while still using the proper technical terms to ensure nothing is lost in translation, and also making sure your answer is as short as it can possibly be: [insert request here]
Save this one as a text replacement first. It’s the most reusable of the four and works for almost any topic you throw at it, from tax questions to car repair to why your code keeps throwing the same error.
Set up even one of these as a shortcut and you’ll notice how much friction disappears from your prompting. The five minutes it takes to add these to your keyboard settings pays for itself the first time you use one without having to think. Check out the full thread for more reactions and a few community-submitted replacements worth stealing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is text replacement and how is it different from copy/paste?
Text replacement is an Apple device feature that auto-swaps a keyboard shortcut with your predefined text across any app. Unlike copy/paste, which requires you to manually hunt down and copy text each time, text replacement just happens, no tab-switching, no friction.
Q: Why use text replacements for my AI prompts instead of just saving them somewhere?
With text replacements, you can fire off complex prompts instantly anywhere (ChatGPT, email, Discord, whatever) without breaking your flow. Pair it with voice-to-text and you’ve got a seamless system for rapid back-and-forth conversations, exactly the kind of lazy optimization that actually saves time.
The text replacements I can’t live without
by u/ibringdalulzz in ChatGPTPromptGenius