Packages

You can reuse replacements created by other users thanks to Espanso's packages strategy. To let you do this, the software comes with its own package manager, which primarily works with the Espanso Hub (Figure 5) on the web, but also accepts other sources. The Espanso Hub website [7] sorts the packages that users have posted there by application or purpose. There is separate documentation [8] for this. In the simplest case, you just install a package by typing the espanso install PACKAGE command.

Figure 5: The Espanso Hub web service lets you include packages with replacements on various subjects that have been posted by other users. To do this, Espanso comes with its own package manager.

There are other user repositories [9] besides the Espanso Hub. I started by installing the html-utils package from the hub. Unlike DIY replacements, two colons trigger the replacement here, as in ::div. The package configuration can be found in ~/.config/espanso/match/packages.

I also added the third-party espanso-config [9] repository. Installing this is a little more complex. First, you need to clone the repository from GitHub to your own home directory using the command from line 1 in Listing 5. You will then find the espanso-config/ directory, which you include in Espanso using a symbolic link (line 2). This is where you will find the YAML files with some quite useful replacements.

$ git clone https://github.com/Lissy93/espanso-config.git
$ ln -s ~/espanso-config ~/.config/espanso/match/packages

Conclusions

Calling Espanso a text expander doesn't do justice to what it provides. The program not only offers more than its competitors in terms of functionality, it also runs on multiple platforms and supports both X11 and Wayland on Linux. The tool comes with excellent documentation, and a configuration, once created, can be synchronized with other systems and platforms [10]. In about one year of use, I have not encountered any errors so far.

Considering the fact that Espanso was first released in September 2019 and that a small team of programmers still develop the tool in their spare time, the huge feature scope, which I only touched on here, is very impressive. And this is by no means the end of the road, as the roadmap shows [11]. A GUI is top of the wish list. It is intended to bring users on board who are wary of using the command line or don't get on with YAML. Following that, a version for Android is on the cards.

In my humble opinion, Espanso is a prime example of what free software can do. The software does not need to hide its light under a bushel when compared with commercial products – quite the contrary. If you use Espanso, please support the project with a donation if possible.