Create and use snippets

Add several snippets at once

Import on the Snippets page adds many snippets from one file, and is available to everyone with no setting to turn on first.

1. Open Snippets and choose Import.

2. Select your file, up to 3MB and 1,000 items.

3. Check the list for the imported snippets.

Limits and errors on Mac and Windows

All, the default tab, combines personal and shared snippets; All and Personal create personal snippets. Cmd+Enter (Mac) / Ctrl+Enter (Windows) saves additions and edits from Snippet or a plain-text Expansion field, but not inside the formatted editor.

Triggers cap at 60 characters without an error, and plain-text input caps silently. Expansions cap at 4,000 characters including formatting, so the formatted editor’s length/4000 counter can reach the limit before 4,000 visible characters; “This expansion is too long. Please shorten it and try again.” blocks saving until you shorten the text or remove formatting.

• Empty or invalid fields: “Please enter a snippet and its expansion”. Triggers containing only punctuation, symbols, or whitespace are rejected.

• Duplicates: A match against a snippet or dictionary entry in the same personal or shared library blocks creation and renaming: “"{word}" already exists in your personal dictionary” or the team equivalent. A trigger saved with extra spaces counts as the same entry as its trimmed version.

• Similar triggers: Case-only variants save, but triggers differing only in capitalization, punctuation, or symbols can conflict — change their wording. A success notice names the first similar trigger; while editing, it appears only after you change the trigger.

Limits and errors on iOS

Only active or trialing team and business accounts show the All/Personal/Team picker; other accounts have none. Triggers must be shorter than 60 characters after trimming.

Validation keeps the sheet open: “Please enter a snippet” means an empty trigger, “Snippet too long” is checked before an empty expansion, “Please enter a word” means an empty expansion, and “Snippet already exists” means either field matches either field of another snippet in the same personal or team list. A save failure after validation closes the sheet and shows an error alert.

Limits and errors on Android

Only business and enterprise accounts show filter chips. Errors include “Please enter a snippet”, “Please enter an expansion”, and “Snippet is too long (max 60 characters)”; the length limit applies after trimming.

“This snippet already exists” and “This is already in your dictionary” block duplicate triggers; editing skips those checks when the trigger is unchanged apart from capitalization.

If your organization turns Snippets off

An admin can turn Snippets off for everyone in the organization. While it is off, Snippets disappears from the desktop app — sidebar and menu bar — and adding, editing, importing, and sharing are blocked. Snippets you already saved are kept and still expand while you dictate, and they reappear in the app if your organization turns Snippets back on.

How desktop matches your trigger

A trigger spoken alone ignores punctuation, symbols, and spacing — including a trailing period — and outputs exactly the saved expansion.

Inside sentences, adjacent punctuation is allowed, and internal punctuation must match. Triggers cannot touch letters, numbers, or underscores. Possessives expand; triggers inside n’t contractions do not. Non-Latin, emoji-containing, and multi-word triggers work within the field limits. Older entries saved with extra spaces around the trigger expand anywhere a clean trigger does, including mid-sentence — you don’t need to re-create them.

Only one conflicting trigger expands: the longest match by character count wins across personal and shared snippets. An entry saved with an empty expansion removes its trigger; an empty trigger is ignored. Plain-text expansions keep literal angle-bracket placeholders, such as “Reply to <name>”, exactly as saved.

Formatted expansions on desktop

The editor supports bold, italic, bulleted and numbered lists, and links; Cmd+K (Mac) / Ctrl+K (Windows) opens the Insert link popup. Paragraphs and line breaks alone stay plain text.

Formatting is kept when you saved formatting and the destination accepts a formatted paste, whether you say the trigger alone or inside a sentence and even when Flow adjusts surrounding capitalization or punctuation; multi-line expansions keep their blank lines and bullet lists.

Formatting falls back to plain text when a snippet is pasted alongside the hyperlink email signature, when the same trigger is used twice in one dictation, or in apps that don’t accept formatted text.

Mac and Windows

Refresh is unavailable while a sync is running.

1. Press Esc to clear selected rows and reveal Refresh.

2. Click Refresh to update personal and shared snippets, then check the list for the missing snippet.

iOS

Signing out and back in re-syncs missing snippets.

1. Sign out of Flow.

2. Sign back in to the same account, then check the list again.

Android

Reopening Snippets retries syncing unless one is already running; a failed shared refresh leaves previously synced shared snippets unchanged.

1. Reopen Snippets, then check the list again.

2. Retry any add, update, or delete that failed, choosing Retry if you see “Something went wrong. Please try again.”