# Espanso

A privacy-first text expander in Rust that turns short triggers into snippets anywhere you type.

HTML: https://softbests.com/software/espanso
Markdown: https://softbests.com/software/espanso.md
Website: https://espanso.org

- Category: [Productivity](https://softbests.com/category/productivity)
- Pricing: Open source
- Platforms: macOS, Windows, Linux
- Underrated

## Best for

People who retype the same email signatures, support replies, code snippets, or dates all day.

## Why it deserves attention

Espanso watches what you type and replaces triggers with snippets, supporting plain text, rich text, images, shell commands, dates, clipboard content, forms, and regex triggers, with app-specific configurations and a package hub for shared sets. It is written in Rust, runs locally with no account or telemetry, and works on macOS, Windows, and Linux. It is GPL-3.0 with about 14,700 GitHub stars and free. Configuration lives in YAML files, so heavy users end up editing text rather than clicking, and some apps with custom input handling need per-app workarounds.

## Can replace

- TextExpander
- aText

## Related and alternatives

- [Keyboard Maestro](https://softbests.com/software/keyboard-maestro)
- [Alfred](https://softbests.com/software/alfred)