A personal fork of espanso, the cross-platform text expander written in Rust.
expandir is my personal fork of espanso, a privacy-first, cross-platform text expander. I use it every day.
I forked it because I wanted:
- a sandbox to learn and practice on a real Rust and C++ codebase
- a place to prototype features and experiments that don't need to fit the official project
The code is based on the official espanso codebase. It is not an official espanso release and it is not affiliated with the espanso project in any way.
The name comes from the Portuguese verb expandir, to expand. I chose a name that stands on its own because I did not want this fork to sound like a premium or paid edition of espanso. It is neither of those. It is just my personal build.
If you want a stable text expander, use the official project: https://github.com/espanso/espanso.
Features and experiments I'm adding, all opt-in:
| Feature | Status |
|---|---|
Search window opens near the mouse cursor (search_use_cursor_position) |
Working on macOS. Windows and Linux testing pending |
| Clipboard history and searchable history UI | Planned |
| Temporary copy/paste hotspots (register slots) | Planned |
| AI snippet authoring assistant | Planned |
| Settings panel (GUI for config toggles) | Planned |
| Match editor GUI | Planned |
See ROADMAP.md for the full plan.
espanso is one of my all-time favorite piece of software. I used TextBlaze for years, more than 61K expansions logged with it, and when I discovered espanso I switched and never looked back. It's fast, private, and works everywhere I do.
This fork is my way of giving back. It's a playground where I can build the features I wish espanso had, and a place to learn from a codebase I genuinely admire. I can't wait to see these features land, starting with the search window opening near the cursor. It already works great on my Mac.
Setup and usage are the same as espanso. The only difference is the binary name, which is
expandir instead of espanso. Follow the official
espanso documentation to install and configure it, and use
expandir wherever the docs say espanso.
cargo build --releaseThe built binary is target/release/expandir. For a build with the search window (modulo)
UI:
cargo build --release --no-default-features --features modulo,vendored-tlsThis project is a fork of espanso, created by Federico Terzi and maintained by the espanso team. The core work is theirs:
Thanks also to the libraries the project uses: libxdo, xclip, libxkbcommon, wl-clipboard, and wxWidgets.
This project inherits the upstream license and is licensed under the GPL-3.0 license, as is the original espanso project.