Espanso (Legacy)

Just as I was getting to know espanso, I came across a brand-new version of espanso that is way better that this (0.7.6) version, now called Legacy version. Read about the new version here

I have left the following as is, for posterity

Long time ago, when I used Windows (provided by my employer), I used to use AutoHotkey. Since then, I have not used Windows and never used text expander again.

Then today, I came across espanso – open source text expander and more – in logseq discard channel.

Following does not apply with 2.0.0-alpha version

At first, it was unclear to me that this is a terminal app. Mainly because I installed via Cask, which I’ve done only for UI apps.

Looking at espanso –help I was unclear what to do next, so I tried to start the daemon, which failed. There were no logs via espanso log either. I had seen register command, but did not run because I thought it was register-the-product-by-providing-your-info 😆

Since nothing else worked, I decided to try it anyway. Turns out it registers the daemon with OS. I got the permission dialog from the OS. I also got “This program is trying to control Desktop programmatically” prompt – which I allowed.

After which espanso start worked 😄

To be fair, this is already documented, I just never read the documentation.

With a tool like this, one does not know where to start. Luckily, espanso comes with packages that one can install to get started with some required tasks.

The packages I installed so far are misspell-en and all-emojis

I also created my first abbreviation 🎉 (I added <- this emoji using :tada: 😄 – which comes with all-emojis package)