Supercharge Your QA Workflow with TextExpander + Email Aliases

TextExpander Talk
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When you’re deep in the trenches of QA testing—especially when working with staging or production environments that require email signups—managing accounts efficiently is a must. One small but powerful hack I use is TextExpander paired with email aliasing to instantly generate unique, trackable email addresses on the fly.

Here’s how I do it.

The Gmail Alias Trick

Gmail (and most Google Workspace domains) allows you to append a plus sign (+) and extra text to your email address, and it will still deliver to your main inbox

So, if your base email is:

qaengineer@example.com

You can sign up for a service using:

qaengineer+servicename@example.com

Everything still lands in your main inbox, but you get a unique address that you can filter or trace. This is especially useful when:

  • Testing new user registration workflows
  • Simulating multiple user accounts
  • Identifying where spam is coming from
  • Verifying account-based feature toggles

Automating with TextExpander

To take this to the next level, I created a snippet in TextExpander called:

com.REM

You can find it in the Community Snippets Public Group.

This snippet generates an email alias that includes the current date and time—so every time I use it, I get a completely unique address.

Here’s the format I use behind the scenes:

qa-email-alias
qa-email-alias1326×1158 59.5 KB

When expanded, I’ll end up with:
qaengineer+07312520@example.com

I can repeat this and always guarantee a unique email will be generated. I can use this instantly in a signup form or test script and never worry about duplicates.

Why This Works for QA

  1. No Manual Typing: I don’t have to stop and think of a random alias every time.
  2. Always Unique: The timestamp ensures no collisions during testing.
  3. Easy Cleanup: Since all test data is tied to a recognizable format, I can easily script deletion or filtering in the admin.
  4. Inbox Organization: I can set up Gmail filters to label or auto-archive anything with + in the address.

This simple workflow has saved me hours of manual effort over the years and helped me keep a clean, organized testing environment. If you’re a QA engineer using TextExpander, I highly recommend building snippets around the tools you use every day.

1 Like
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Is there something similar for yahoo mail?
Thanks

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Hi, @ArthurSissman, I believe Yahoo also supports plus addressing, so it should work there as well. I would make a copy of this Snippet, customize it for your email address, and then send a test email to the address created by the Snippet to see if it goes through.