Canned responses that work outside Gmail and Outlook

I am Gerhard. I built PhraseVault for the reply that was already approved, and then had to be typed again because the conversation changed windows.

If you answer customers, you have probably saved that reply where the mail client lets you. Gmail has templates. Outlook has templates and Quick Parts. You wrote the wording once, someone signed off on it, and the inbox can insert it. Then the same person writes in Slack. Or a ticket opens in a browser. Or a form on the site asks for the explanation you sent from the inbox an hour ago. The template is still sitting in the mail client. You are somewhere else. So you retype it. The second version is a little softer, or a little longer, or missing the sentence someone asked you to keep.

The canned response did its job inside one program. The conversation did not stay there.

The work is one approved answer, placed at the cursor, in whatever window holds the thread.

A refund window. The steps for a password reset. The line that a quote is valid for 14 days. The note you send when a shipment slips. Those texts are short, which is why they drift. One person writes "five business days." Another writes "about a week." A third pastes an older copy from a personal drafts folder. They were in a hurry, and the agreed sentence lived in Gmail or Outlook.

A help desk can keep macros of its own. Those stay inside that desk. They do not ride along into Slack, into the mail client, or into some other form in the browser. PhraseVault is one library for every field that can take a paste. You put the cursor where the text should land, you summon, you insert. Mail, a browser, Slack, an editor, a terminal, a help desk in a tab: the reply lands there. There is no Gmail connection to configure, and no Outlook add-in to keep updated.

Each reply gets a name I would say to a colleague. "Refund window, 14 days." "Password reset, three steps." "Quote follow-up, valid 14 days." "Shipment slip, new date." A plain name is the whole index I am willing to keep in my head. When the thread is moving and I think "the refund one," I type refund. I never assign a code such as ;rf14 beside the real sentence. PhraseVault has no trigger abbreviations, so there is nowhere to put one.

The sequence is the same in every app. I click where the text should go. On Windows I press Ctrl+. On a Mac I press Cmd+. Settings can move that summon shortcut if the chord is already taken. PhraseVault opens over the app I was typing in.

I type a few letters from the name or from the reply itself. Search matches those fragments against the name. For an unprotected phrase it also matches the contents, and every word I type has to appear. It matches stored text, and it will not repair a misspelling. An exact name match comes first, then phrases in the order I actually use them. A phrase protected with the PIN stays searchable by name only, even while it is unlocked.

When the first row is the one I want, I press Enter. The reply pastes at the cursor, the window hides, and the clipboard from a moment ago is restored. I move to another row first if I want that one. Escape puts the window away when I opened it by accident.

Slack and a ticket comment want plain text, so most of these replies are plain text. When an email needs a short list or a bit of emphasis, I save that phrase as Markdown. On insert, PhraseVault turns the Markdown into formatted HTML for apps that accept it, among them Word, Google Docs, Outlook, and Gmail. The path is still a paste into the composer.

A few replies need one blank filled in, and the rest must stay fixed. {{input:Ship date}} asks for a single line before the paste. {{date}} fills in today's date on its own. My "Shipment slip, new date" phrase apologizes that the parcel missed its window, inserts the date I just typed, and promises a note if that date moves. Enter opens the date prompt. Once I fill it in and confirm, PhraseVault pastes the whole reply. I can call it from Outlook in the morning and from a Slack thread after lunch.

Gmail templates and Outlook Quick Parts do not follow you into Slack or a help desk. A desktop expander does not have that wall.

TextExpander and Espanso already insert across the machine, in chat and in the browser as well as in mail. AutoHotkey can expand hotstrings on Windows inside a script you maintain, and it can automate much more than replies. Typedesk and Lightning Assist aim at the same chore: canned replies in Slack and on a help desk, as well as in an inbox. People do real work in these tools, so this note stays short.

A trigger fits the habit of typing ;refund and watching it expand. Espanso is built around triggers. TextExpander has spent years on abbreviation expansion and on shared libraries. That suits a short list of codes you type all day. I find codes harder to remember once the library is a support handbook, including the reply I send twice a quarter. PhraseVault keeps a search box over a local file. You save a name you can say. Search uses that name and, for an unprotected phrase, the body.

If the replies already live in an Espanso YAML file or a TextExpander CSV, PhraseVault can import them. The preview shows each phrase and lets you skip or overwrite one at a time. A trial can start from the library you have.

The phrases live in a SQLite file on your disk. There is no PhraseVault account, and no server of mine that receives the text. The app works offline. It runs on Windows 10 and newer, and on macOS 13 Ventura and newer. One license covers both systems for that person.

When the same replies should appear on another computer, put the database file in a folder you already sync. Dropbox, OneDrive, and iCloud are enough. You bring the folder. Sync is not a plan I sell on top of the license. A small team can open one shared database from one of those synced folders, which is how a support group keeps a single approved wording. Each person still needs their own license.

The file is only as current as the sync behind it. On a fast cloud drive the wait is usually short. iCloud Drive can take longer, so this is a poor fit for two people rewriting the same sentence in the same minute. For replies that change when the policy changes, it can be enough. Settings shows the path. You can open a second database when support and sales should keep separate libraries, and you can copy the file when you want a backup.

Start with the ten answers you pasted or retyped last week. Take the ones that already have an approved shape: the refund window, the reset steps, the quote validity, the shipment slip, the line you keep hunting through Sent.

Name each one the way you would name it out loud. Save it. For a week, wherever the thread actually is, put the cursor in the field, press Ctrl+. or Cmd+., type a word from the name or from the reply, and press Enter. If a name or a date has to change per customer, put that blank in the phrase once. Leave the policy sentence fixed.

The download includes a 14-day trial, and it does not ask for a card. The license after that is paid once. If the week tells you that five abbreviations, expanding as you type, are really how you work, a trigger-based expander may fit your hands better. If the week tells you that a reply you barely send is still easy to find, in the app you happen to have open, that is the job I built PhraseVault for.