Guide, Lightmorphic Text

The first run sets everything up

The first time you open the app, it checks what your computer already has and does the rest itself: it fetches Espanso, the engine that does the actual text expanding, and, on Wayland desktops, asks once for permission to read the keyboard, using your desktop's own password prompt. Nothing is installed system-wide, so it works the same on immutable systems like openSUSE Aeon or Fedora Silverblue.

The guided first run: numbered steps, plain-English explanation, one button

Adding a snippet is a form, not a file

Press the yellow plus, type the trigger (what you'll type, like :sig) and the replacement (what appears instead), and save. The snippet works the moment it's saved, Espanso is reloaded for you. "Whole words only" stops a trigger firing in the middle of longer words, and "Match the case I type" makes :brb and :BRB behave differently.

The main window: the snippet list on the left, the editing form on the right

Search finds anything, as you type

The search box matches triggers and replacement text at the same time, highlighting what it found. A half-remembered snippet, "the one with thanks in it somewhere", is a few keystrokes away.

Searching: the list narrows and matching text is highlighted

Clever snippets are shown, never touched

Espanso can do advanced things, dates, forms, scripts. Snippets like that are listed and shown exactly as they appear in your file, marked advanced and read-only. The app never rewrites what it can't fully represent, so nothing you built by hand can be quietly broken.

An advanced snippet shown read-only, exactly as it appears in the file

The buttons along the top

Turn Espanso off or on. Off means off, text expansion stops, and stays stopped through restarts, until you press it again.

Restart Espanso. A fresh start for the engine, for the rare day it needs one.

Export. Saves every snippet, comments, advanced ones, installed packages, into a single backup file, wherever you choose.

Import. Brings snippets in from a backup, or from a snippet file someone shared. Your existing files are never overwritten.

Open the config folder. For a look at the files themselves, they're yours, and other editors are welcome.

Reload from disk. If something else edited your files, this refreshes the list, though the app usually notices by itself.

The little dot knows about updates

Green Up to date. Click it to check again right now.

Yellow A new version exists. Click to download it.

Ring Downloading, the line traces the edge as it goes.

Blue Ready. Click to restart into the new version.

Red Can't reach GitHub. Click to try again.

It lives in the tray

Closing the window doesn't quit: the app tucks itself into the tray and keeps checking for updates quietly. Click the tray icon to bring it back, or use its menu to quit properly. (On GNOME the tray needs the AppIndicator extension; on desktops without any tray, closing simply quits.)

Every save keeps a backup

Before any file is changed, a dated copy is kept under ~/.local/share/lightmorphic-text/backups. Your comments, spacing and ordering are preserved on every save, only the values you actually changed are rewritten.

Your files, standard Espanso

Everything is plain Espanso configuration in ~/.config/espanso. Stop using the app tomorrow and your snippets keep working; point any other Espanso tool at them and it all just fits.

How to use Lightmorphic Text