Espanso

My personal Espanso text expander configuration files and setup

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Links: Espanso Website | EspansoHub | Documentation | Reddit Community | GitHub

What is espanso?

Espanso is an Open Source text-expander tool.

Ideas

• Current IP Address
• Time Codes for Work
• Emoji's
• Email Templates

Setup

Installation

Install via on Windows using a package manager of choice:

• winget
• chocolatey
• scoop

# winget
winget install FedericoTerzi.espanso

# chocolatey
sudo cinst -y espanso

# scoop 
scoop install espanso

espanso should launch at startup, but to check run espanso status, and if it says espanso is not running then run espanso start.

Configuration

espanso uses a file-based configuration approach. Simply run espanso path to determine the configuration folder's path.

> ~\AppData\Roaming\espanso :: git(main) 10:43:57
➜ wsl -e tree
.
├── README.md
├── default.yml
└── user
    ├── credit-cards.yml
    ├── dev-secrets.yml
    ├── dev.yml
    ├── emails.yml
    ├── links.yml
    ├── passwords.yml
    ├── phone-numbers.yml
    └── websites.yml

1 directory, 10 files

Notes

espanso scripts should be located at %APPDATA%\espanso (on Windows) ¹ with a file named default.yml and (optionally) a sub-directory named user (i.e. %APPDATA%\espanso\user).

Place sub-level child-scripts in the user folder.

User Scripts

Currently I have a total of 8 user-specific child scripts under parent default.yml, which are housed in the user dirctory:

• credit-cards.yml: My credit cards ²
• dev-secrets.yml: Developer secrets ²
• dev.yml: Development related replacements (i.e. common code strings).
• emails.yml: My email addresses
• links.yml: Personal websites
• passwords.yml: My common passwords ²
• phone-numbers.yml: My cell phone numbers
• websites.yml: Similar to links.yml

Editing

For quick editing of espanso scripts run espanso edit.

Toggle (Important!)

To toggle espanso's runtime simply double-tab the Alt key. This makes it useful to temporarilly disable then re-enable the service.

Application Specific

Use the filter_title configuration variable to specify expansions that should only apply in windows with a title of the provided value. For example, to only match and trigger the below expansion in Outlook you would use:

filter_title: "Outlook"
matches:
    - trigger: ":signature"
      replace: "Jimmy Briggs"

The following table lays out all possible filter_* configurations:

Filter	Description	Windows Support	MacOS Support	Linux Support
filter_title	Filter based on the current Window title	Full support	Uses the App identifier instead of the Window title	Full support
filter_exec	Filter based on the current application executable path	Full support	Full support	Partial support
filter_class	Filter based on the current Window class	Uses the application executable path instead	Uses the App identifier instead	Full support

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Footnotes

1. File Paths are Operating Sysstem Dependent:

   • Linux: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/espanso (e.g. /home/user/.config/espanso)
   • macOS: $HOME/Library/Preferences/espanso (e.g. /Users/user/Library/Preferences/espanso)
   • Windows: {FOLDERID_RoamingAppData}\espanso (e.g. %APPDATA%\espanso))
   ↩

2. Encrypted via git-crypt. ↩ ↩² ↩³