Every time you ask AI for options on mobile, you run the same obstacle course. Tap the text. Wait for the popup. Tap Copy. Switch apps. Paste. Repeat for each option.
Five taps per suggestion. For a list of ten ideas, that’s fifty taps just moving text around. And that’s the optimistic count, the one where your thumb lands perfectly, the selection popup doesn’t vanish the moment you move, and the OS doesn’t decide to select a different word than the one you wanted. In practice it’s closer to seventy taps, three moments of quiet frustration, and at least one time where you accidentally share the wrong option because you lost track of what was on your clipboard.
Most people assume this is just the cost of using AI on mobile. It isn’t.
There’s a better way, and it takes three words.
Old Way vs New Way
Old way: AI returns plain text suggestions. You fight your phone to copy each one. The selection popup appears and disappears. You tap three times and still don’t have it on your clipboard. Then you switch to your email app, realize you grabbed the wrong option, switch back, try again. The whole thing takes ninety seconds for something that should take five.
The deeper problem is that plain text on mobile was never designed for selective copying. Your phone treats a paragraph as one blob. Long-pressing gives you a handle on one end and a handle on the other, and getting those handles around exactly the text you want is a skill nobody should have to develop. It’s friction that compounds across every prompt, every session, every day you use AI on your phone.
New way: AI returns code blocks. Every code block on every mobile chat interface has a one-tap copy button built in. No selection dance. No waiting for the popup. The button is right there, it copies exactly the content of that block and nothing else, and it works every single time.
The reason this works is that code blocks are treated differently by every chat UI. They get a dedicated rendering container, and that container always ships with a copy button because developers expect programmers to need exact copies of code snippets. That same button works just as well when the “code” is actually a subject line or an ad headline. The interface doesn’t know the difference. You get the same one-tap reliability either way.
The trick came from r/ChatGPTPromptGenius and it’s almost embarrassingly simple. Add this instruction to any prompt where you want selectable options:
code block each choiceThat’s it. Your AI wraps each suggestion in its own code block. You tap the copy icon. Done.
🛠️ How to Set This Up Once and Forget It
- 📋 Add the phrase to your keyboard app (GBoard, SwiftKey, anything with custom shortcuts)
- Pin it as a shortcut so it pastes with one tap
- Add it to any prompt where you want pickable options
- Tap the copy button on whichever suggestion you want
The keyboard shortcut is the part that turns this from a tip you’ll remember for a week into a permanent upgrade. In GBoard, go to Settings, then Dictionary, then Personal Dictionary, and add the phrase with a short trigger like “cb” or “//cb”. Next time you’re typing a prompt, hit your shortcut and the phrase drops in automatically. The whole setup takes about two minutes.
If you use AI prompts through a notes app or a saved prompt library, add the phrase directly into your templates so you never have to think about it. It becomes invisible infrastructure.
Works in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and any interface that renders markdown code blocks.
The use case isn’t just subject lines and captions. Hook ideas, ad copy variants, reply options, product names, bio rewrites, call-to-action phrasings. Think about any prompt where you ask for a list of five to ten options and then spend time hunting for the one you want. That’s where this matters most. You ask for ten email subject lines, they come back as ten separate code blocks, you skim them, tap the one that feels right, and it’s already on your clipboard before you’ve finished reading the last option.
The speed difference is real. What used to take a full minute of careful tapping now takes under ten seconds. Across a day of normal AI use on mobile, that adds up to something you’ll actually notice.
One keyboard shortcut. Saves you the copy ritual on every prompt that returns options.
Add it to your keyboard today and you’ll wonder why AI chats don’t do this by default!
Easier using final suggestions from AI chat
by u/RivitsekCrixus in ChatGPTPromptGenius