Try Espanso. Auto-complete Email, Address, or Phone Number

Espanso is a text expansion tool. You can define keywords for common phrases, type fewer characters, and save yourself some effort. That may sound a little abstract, so here is an example. Many platforms use an email address as the account name. If we set :mail as a keyword, we can save time and avoid typos.

The official website has very detailed installation instructions, so you can just follow them. For Windows, I recommend installing it from the command line with winget install Espanso.Espanso, we don’t have to keep clicking through annoying “Next” buttons.

Configuration And Practical Examples

Espanso’s configuration files are located under C:\Users\[your_username]\AppData\Roaming\espanso:

├─config
│      default.yml
│
└─match
    │  base.yml # 👈 Keywords are configured here
    │
    └─packages # Packages
        ├─actually-all-emojis
        └─shruggie

The pattern locates in base.yml. Here is a practical example:

matches:
  # Email
  - trigger: ":mail"
    replace: "john.doe@example.com"
  # Student ID
  - trigger: ":001"
    replace: "001342045"
  # School email
  - trigger: ":cc"
    replace: "001342045@cc.ncu.edu.tw"
  # Name
  - trigger: ":name"
    replace: "John Doe"
  # Triple nerd face, which I often use in chats
  - trigger: ":nd"
    replace: "🤓🤓🤓"
  # Phone number
  - trigger: ":phone"
    replace: "0912345678"
  # ID number
  - trigger: ":id"
    replace: "A123456789"
  # Home address
  - trigger: ":addr"
    replace: "台北市中正區重慶南路一段122號"

Pretty simple, right? The : prefix is not required. Just a leader key to avoid triggering expansions accidentally. Here is what the :nd expansion looks like in practice:

…

Espanso actually has many more features, such as shell commands, regex matches, forms, variables, packages, and so on. Honestly, I only use it as a quick text completion tool.

Espanso is powerful and stable, but promoting it to general users may still require a graphical interface. However, I think configuring with YAML is hard to ordinary people.