Most people install Promptshot, accept the defaults, and get about half of the value available to them. The defaults are deliberately conservative — they have to work for a copywriter and a backend engineer alike. If you know that English is the thing slowing you down, a few minutes of setup makes a large difference.

This is the configuration we recommend.

Pick a hotkey you can reach without looking

The default is ⌘⌥E. It is fine, but it is a two-modifier stretch, and you will press it dozens of times a day. Two better options:

  • ⌘' — one modifier, right under your little finger, and almost never bound by other apps.
  • A double-tap of ⌘ — available under Settings → Hotkey → Advanced. Nothing to reach for at all.

Whatever you choose, test it inside your IDE first. Editors claim the most shortcuts, and a hotkey that works everywhere except the place you write commit messages is not much of a hotkey.

Turn off the confirmation step

By default Promptshot shows you the rewrite and waits for you to accept it. That is the right behaviour while you build trust in the output. After a week it is friction.

Once you stop reading the diffs, go to Settings → Behaviour and switch Replace immediately on. ⌘Z still restores your original text in every app we support, so the safety net is the one you already use.

Use two profiles, not five

People who set up five profiles end up using one. The pair that actually earns its keep:

  1. Polish on the bare hotkey — fixes grammar and article usage, leaves everything else alone.
  2. Translate on ⌃ + hotkey — takes whatever language you wrote and produces English at the same register.

The second one matters more than it sounds. Writing a first draft in your own language and translating it is consistently faster than composing directly in English, and the result reads better because you were not rationing vocabulary while thinking.

If you write in Russian, Polish, Turkish or Vietnamese, check that your model choice handles the language well. Claude Sonnet 5 is noticeably stronger than the small models on Slavic and Turkic grammar.

Write the prompt for your own mistakes

Generic “fix my English” prompts fix generic English. Yours has a fingerprint. Spend ten minutes reading back your last twenty messages and note what you actually get wrong, then name it:

Rewrite the selected text in natural English.

Pay particular attention to:
- Articles (a/an/the) — my first language has none.
- Present perfect vs past simple.
- Prepositions after "depends", "consist" and "discuss".

Keep my meaning, structure and tone. Return only the rewritten text.

Naming the error class works far better than asking for general improvement. The model stops paraphrasing and starts correcting.

What not to bother with

  • A custom model endpoint, unless you have a compliance reason. The hosted default is faster than a local model on a laptop.
  • Long style guides in the prompt. Past roughly 150 words of instruction, adherence starts dropping and latency does not.
  • Per-app profiles. Modifier keys are quicker to reach for than a rule engine, and you will always have exceptions.

Five minutes, two profiles, one reachable hotkey. That is the whole setup.

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