espanso
An open source, cross-platform text expander written in Rust.
EU
Features
Properties
- Configurable
- Lightweight
Features
- Text Expansion
- Works Offline
- Support for scripting
- Portable
- Console-based
- Ad-free
espanso News & Activities
Recent News
Recent activities
- bearygarcia liked espanso
g79t8c6w94 added espanso as alternative to Text Expander - Keyboard- brickelt963-altto reviewed espanso
It’s not particularly user-friendly when it comes to adding new items. This is done via a .yml script, where you need to take care to use exactly the same format as in the examples (including the tab spaces). But apart from that, it’s the best ‘text expander’, compatible with both Linux and Windows, and for the script, simply copying and pasting ensures you don’t break it.
snippetcraft added espanso as alternative to SnippetCraft- canering liked espanso
- auslegungssache liked espanso
- snommellow liked espanso
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What is espanso?
Tired of typing the same sentences over and over? Discover the incredible power of a full-blown text expander.
Smarter typing
No more copy and pasting, create templates once and let Espanso do the rest for you. Customer support replies, sales pitches, medical reports, you name it. Espanso got you covered.
Every sentence, one search away
Don’t remember a shortcut? No worries. Just press ALT+Space and Espanso’s search bar will open, letting you search for the perfect snippet.
Dates, Emojis 🚀, and more...
Don’t wrap your head around dates. Espanso makes it easy to use them, both past and future ones. Bring emojis 🤠 in all your favorite apps, one shortcut away.
Endless extensibility
Extend Espanso’s capabilities with packages, or create your owns and share them with the community on the Espanso Hub. Need to insert mathematical notation? Or perhaps german accents? We got a package for them. We even got the shrug ¯_(?)_/¯
Shell and Script support
For advanced use-cases, you can extend Espanso’s snippets with shell commands or custom scripts. No more copy-pasting from the terminal, inject the output into applications directly.
Form support
Use forms to handle complex workflows, creating templates that can be reused with ease. You can even forward form values into custom scripts, opening up endless possibilities.
espanso information
Developed by
Federico Terzi Licensing
Open Source (GPL-3.0) and Free product.Written in
Rating
Average rating of 4.7Alternatives
59 alternatives listedSupported Languages
- English
AlternativeTo Categories
Development, Office & ProductivityGitHub repository
- 14,325 Stars
- 457 Forks
- 535 Open Issues
- Updated
Comments and Reviews
Fast and reliable, easy to configure, and with text-based configuration files that you can easily share between computers and keep in source control.
Not user-friendly at all. No interface; you have to access codes and scripts. I'll keep searching for a PC replacement to my beloved Typinator, which I use on my Mac...
There are GUI shells for espanso. Also CLI is a much more efficient interface for text expansion.
It’s not particularly user-friendly when it comes to adding new items. This is done via a .yml script, where you need to take care to use exactly the same format as in the examples (including the tab spaces). But apart from that, it’s the best ‘text expander’, compatible with both Linux and Windows, and for the script, simply copying and pasting ensures you don’t break it.
IF you install the espanso-gui alongside it, it's quite straightforward to use and run even for beginners. The GUI also makes it apparent that one can simply edit the .yml files in %Appdata%\Roaming\espanso\match to very easily add text strings.
The only thing that's going to block beginners is that the Windows pre-compiled binary is only available if they download the previous version 23.10 -- if they grab the latest version 24.7 from github, it's just going to be a bunch of source code and build/makefiles. It would make more sense to include the simple GUI in the espanso default installer, perhaps as a toggle-able option.
Beginners are more likely to have a much easier time with the program PepperText. There is a case when you will want to use Espanso though. For instance, the making of long list of items, especially emoji. Note that Espanso has no user interface until you add one. The way to start, is to also install this:
espansoGUI Espanso and PepperText handle multiple choice, but not all expander programs do. set two entries to the same keyword. If you want to set a long list of just text to shortcuts, I suggest the program TyperTask because you can put them in the text file vs messing with yaml. Note that Espanso opens a search/launch bar when a trigger word is typed, and that might "hijack" programs like Listary if a trigger word is typed. PepperText doesn't have that issue because it pops up text vs a toolbar. On the plus, the toolbar method gives you a choice to prevent an auto-typing if you don't want it at the moment.
My favourite text expander.
Can substitute dynamically for dates, etc.
Also acts as a script trigger.
Linux standard install is CLI and lightweight. GUI available for techno-grannies.
.ymlbased cofiguration, extremely easy to learn. No coding experience required.It's very simple, easy to use, and you gotta love that it's free and open source. Excellent time saver!