Lots of us spend hours every week typing away responding to emails and filling in spreadsheets. When these typing tasks become repetitive, a text expander for Windows is a no-brainer for automating some of your least favorite work. 😴

But what should you look for when evaluating a text expander? Do you go for a free option or a paid piece of software? And which features are absolutely crucial to the experience—and which ones actually don’t make much of a difference at all?

The answers to these questions are below, according to people who work at some of the biggest brands around the world—Including Disney, Netflix, Facebook and Salesforce. When it comes to finding the best text expander for Windows, these are the things you should be thinking about.

Hold up. What’s a text expander?

A text expander is an app that helps you automate your typing process. These tools let you save and insert text snippets—whether they’re phrases you use regularly, or even complete email templates—so that you don’t have to type them out every time. 

If you spend your day in front of a keyboard, a text expander can save you about seven hours a week, on average. And we’re not just talking about writers here. Sales teams, recruiters, and customer support teams can all save heaps of time by using a text expander. Combined, users at Magical have saved over 1,500 years! 🤯

What should you look for in the best text expander for Windows?

There’s no shortage of text expanders for Windows, but some will suit you better than others. Some only offer text expansion features, while others give you much more. 

Let’s look at some of the key things you should look for:

1. Simple to set up and easy to use

First and foremost, text expanders need to help you improve your typing workflow—instantly. Sadly, some tools have steeper learning curves and tougher setup processes than others. Some popular text expanders separate text expansion from inserting long phrases—so you’ll need to separately store and sort long phrases to use them later.

For example, the Magical app is super easy to install and use. All it takes is a single click to add it to Chrome (or any Chromium-based browser, such as Microsoft Edge). Magical also treats all shortcuts in a similar way, so you can store them and insert them into messages and fields without hassle. It’s no more difficult to save an email template than a Zoom meeting link. 🪄

2. Affordable and scalable

Many text expanders for Windows include subscription fees to use the most useful features. Even though these costs can be quite reasonable ($5-10 for a personal plan), you’ll want to consider whether they’re worth it before you pull out your credit card. (Especially when an app like Magical gives you the same exact features—but totally free.)

3. Collaborative

Most text expansion tools are designed  with personal use in mind. They help you save time and improve your productivity. But what if you’re looking to improve your whole team’s workflow? 

For example, if you’re in a sales team that frequently composes outreach emails, sharing your shortcuts will help other team members do their job quicker. It will also keep everyone on the same page so they speak with one voice when communicating with customers.

Magical’s Team Library lets you centralize shortcuts so everyone can use them:

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And if you wanna keep some of your shortcuts exclusively for personal use? Just select the “Personal” setting from the drop-down menu:

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If you’re looking for a collaborative text expander, you’ll want to make sure it works across different operating systems as well. With Magical, for example, the app works on Windows, Mac, and Chromebook so you can collaborate smoothly with everyone on your team.

4. Customizable

Just how much can your text expander do for you? The most basic expanders let you use simple shortcuts to reduce the time you spend typing. That’s great for starters—but more robust tools have some extra tricks up their sleeve. 

Take the text variables on Magical, for example. This feature allows you to create large, customizable templates that automatically populate with personalized details. You can use variables like [First Name], [Job Title], and [Company] to make customization a snap. 

Text variables save you from having to manually add clumsy fill-in-the-blanks to your shortcut. Here’s a look at how they speed up your email process:

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5. Full of templates

Why create all your new text expansions from scratch? The most popular Windows text expanders come chock-full of templates to make it oh so much easier to get started. Otherwise, you’ll have to spend several (potential painstaking) hours creating each boilerplate message you want to have ready to expand.

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Magical, for example, comes with a free template library to help you start saving time right away. You can install MagicPacks in just a few clicks, including shortcuts and suggested templates for different use cases. Just take a look at how you can speed up professional correspondences with some of the templates in our Professional Emails MagicPack:

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6. Spell-checking functionality

Text expansion is really useful, but so is the ability to correct typos automatically. You could use a dedicated tool like Grammarly to correct your errors—but a Windows text expander like Magical can do it for you, too. In fact, there’s already a special Misspelled Words MagicPack with commonly-misspelled words to protect you from any awkward typos. 

Here’s a snippet of the pack:

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Notice any words that you commonly misspell? You’re not alone. We’re definitly guilty of misspelling acomodate more times than we’d care to admit. 😵‍💫

The best Windows text expander for recruiters, sales, and customer service teams

Unlike other text expanders you’ll find online, Magical is designed with recruiters, sales, and customer service teams in mind. Let’s take a look at how each of these professional roles can use the app to become more productive in their work.

1. Magical for recruiters and HR professionals

Magical turbocharges candidate outreach and applicant communication. No need to sit down and compose long messages. Just use the Recruiting MagicPack and use shortcuts to make the whole messaging process quick and easy—without sacrificing personalization. The app can even pull personal info from a potential candidate’s LinkedIn page and automatically add it into your outreach message.

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Using Magical, recruiters have saved over 8 years of time. 😯

2. Magical for sales teams

Salespeople use Magical to easily send outreach messages. The app can automatically pull data from any tab you have open with your prospect’s personal details and add it into the message. No more wasting time on repetitive (and error-prone) copying and pasting. 

We also built three MagicPacks to help Sales teams out with:

• Social sales. Need to connect with potential leads on LinkedIn? Check out our Social Sales Link pack.
• Responses. Need to schedule follow-up meetings, congratulate someone on a promotion, or wish a lead Happy Birthday? Our detailed Sales MagicPack has you covered.
• Cold outreach. Cold emails can help your team land new clients, but they can be tricky to compose. Fortunately, Justin Bay, founder of Blissful Prospecting, put the Cold Emails MagicPack together to help you out.

Using Magical, sales teams have saved over 42 years of time. 😁

3. Magical for customer service professionals 

When you’re managing large volumes of customer messages and requests, retyping the same long messages time and time again is pretty draining. So we put together a MagicPack just for customer support teams to help you save time and keep customers happy. 

Here’s a peek behind the curtain:

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Combined, Magical has saved customer support teams 356 years of time. And just last week, customer support teams saved 91 years of time. ⌚

Magical is a no-code solution that helps you speed up your work. Whatever operating system you use, simply download the Magical extension for your web browser and you’ll be able to work more efficiently across 10,000+ websites and platforms. And Presto! Effortless text expansion for Windows users, plus a lot more functionality for sales pros, recruiters, and customer service teams.