What are some interesting use cases people are using Espanso for?
Espanso – Cross-Platform Text Expander Written in Rust
21–30 of 40 posts
Re: Espanso – Cross-Platform Text Expander Written in Rust
#22I found Espanso very useful, but some bugs made me move on to Raycast, BetterTouchTool, etc. for similar functionality. For example, if Espanso config file is on a cloud drive, it doesn't automatically sync or read the file upon reboot. I'm planning to move back to Espanso though, as Raycast is moving in the wrong direction with all the AI non-features.
Can't you just write a startup script that waits 1 minutes after a reboot and then restarts the Espanso service to apply the freshly downloaded config?
that seems less than optimal, the whole service needs to restart 1 minute after a reboot?
on edit: changed system to service
Re: Espanso – Cross-Platform Text Expander Written in Rust
#23This is basically what Data Detectors natively does in macOS, is it?
Re: Espanso – Cross-Platform Text Expander Written in Rust
#24Autohotkey is go to on Windows for stuff like this, and its called hotstrings [1]. Hotstrings are much more powerfull. Trigger can for example run arbitrary function. AFAIK on linux, you can run it using wine.
Re: Espanso – Cross-Platform Text Expander Written in Rust
#25Anyone know how to change the default :date output to YYYY-MM-DD instead of MM/DD/YYYY on macOS? I’ve tried the following in default.yml and reloading the config, but it’s not working and Claude, Gemini, and myself are stumped :) matches: - trigger: ":date" replace: "{{mydate}}" vars: - name: mydate type: date params: format: "%Y-%m-%d"
I know it's not perhaps helpful, but I have the _exact_ same code, and it's worked for ages on macOS. Do other matches work correctly?
I have it in `~/.config/espanso/match/base.yml`.
Re: Espanso – Cross-Platform Text Expander Written in Rust
#26I love espanso! The cross-platform support is huge (I use it on macOS, windows, and X11 and Wayland-based Linux systems).
Moreover, the original creator (Federico) and the current head maintainer to whom he has handed most of the day-to-day (AucaCoyan) are two of the kindest people I have ever come across in open source. All issues and contributors are treated with respect, it really is refreshing to feel so welcome when trying to contribute.
Re: Espanso – Cross-Platform Text Expander Written in Rust
#27I think the problem Espanso is trying to solve should be addressed by GUI toolkits, like GTK, QT, etc. Otherwise, living with an authorized keylogger in our system in order to introduce unicode characters seems overkill.
Re: Espanso – Cross-Platform Text Expander Written in Rust
#28Just installed it and started using.
It is timely as I have to fill a number of forms today on government sites so looking forward to using it.
What are some best practices you have come up with for reducing the cognitive load for the trigger lifecycle - that is detect the need, come up with one that fits an easy to retrieve mental model? Namespacing obviously comes to mind, and some trigger design should be as conflict free as possible, yet brief:
:i.a - address
:i.n - name
:i.p - phone
Re: Espanso – Cross-Platform Text Expander Written in Rust
#29What are some interesting use cases people are using Espanso for?
I use it to shorten common requests I have for my colleagues, e.g. to not forget their code reviews, or alias phrases I commonly use to a :command. It's handy as a form filler too.
I've seen people using it to insert emojis, lorem ipsum text, or fixing common typos. It's quite powerful because you can even do HTTP requests and mash them with your text.
There is Expanso Hub here, it contains numerous other examples: https://hub.espanso.org/
I'm now thinking about writing an expansion to help me reference tickets, e.g. expand :searchticket to a list of up to 5 URLs. Since it happens inline, I don't have to "submit" the list to anything/anyone until I've cleaned up the message.
Re: Espanso – Cross-Platform Text Expander Written in Rust
#30Just installed it and started using. It is timely as I have to fill a number of forms today on government sites so looking forward to using it. What are some best practices you have come up with for reducing the cognitive load for the trigger lifecycle - that is detect the need, come up with one that fits an easy to retrieve mental model? Namespacing obviously comes to mind, and some trigger design should be as confl…
I was using `,.` as the trigger, as I don't think there are any real-life uses of that simple combo.
- ,.a.macro
- ,.b.macro