ESPANSO
Expand text easily
Shashank Sharma is all for conservation of energy, so he’s mighty excited about Espanso, which helps him write more by typing less.
Shashank Sharma
OUR EXPERT
Shashank Sharma is a trial lawyer in Delhi. An avid Arch user, he’s always on the hunt for discount geeky memorabilia.
Whether we’re executing your favourite commands, frequently accessing certain directories, websites, or signing off email messages, we do a lot of repetitive typing during the course of the day. A lot of this effort can be saved by using text expansion tools such as Espanso.
Espanso is an Italian word meaning ‘expand’ - and that’s precisely what the tool does. It lets you create a list of keywords or snippets which you can associate with longer words, expressions or even sentences. Any time a configured keyword or snippet is encountered, Espanso automatically replaces it with the text.
Released under the GPLv3, this minimalist utility also supports just about all graphical applications such as email clients, browsers and so on. It also has extensive support for the command line and can be used to execute custom scripts, expand keywords into frequently used code snippets, and more.
EXPANDING ESPANSO
In addition to creating custom triggers, you can also install extensions to expand Espanso’s feature set. These extensions, called packages, provide additional functionality. You’ll find a number of packages at https://hub.espanso.org.
To install a package, you need to run the espanso install packagename command. For instance, you can run espanso install basic-emojis or espanso isntall all-emojis to install the emoji packages. Once installed, you’ll be able to insert emojis by using their name, such as :smirk:. :grin: and so on (while enjoying the irony of writing a word in order to create a picture).
Install the arrows package with the espanso install arrows command if your writing involves drawing of arrows. You can now create a right-arrow with \rarrow, a tick with \check and so on.
Each package has its own page describing how to install it and the functionality it adds to Espanso. There are also packages that can help you with Excel formulas, or adding French and German accents when writing.
The html-utils-package will appeal to those who write a lot of HTML code. Once installed, you’ll be able to use :style instead of typing , or :head instead of . All packages are installed in the ~/.local/share/espanso/packages directory. Each package is placed in a different directory within this packages directory, with a package.yml file of its own. You must restart Espanso with espanso restart every time you install a new package, or edit the config file for a package.