Snippet Expander

Auto Expand Snippets

Save your often used text snippets and then auto expand them whenever you type their abbreviation.

For example, you could have an abbreviation "ser`" that expands to "Snippet Expander rules! 🤘" when you type it 😃.

Search & Paste Window

Use the search and paste window if you can't remember your abbreviation, or happen to be using an application that does not allow auto expansion of snippets.

The most recently used snippets are shown first, with numeric quick select keys.

GUI & CLI

As well as the desktop application, you can use a fully featured command line interface to manage your snippets and settings.

Placeholders

In the body of a snippet you can use placeholders for date and time, with calculations and formatting, the clipboard, other snippets, and where the cursor should go after expansion.

Settings

You can control whether Snippet Expander starts when you log in, whether snippets should auto expand, how the Search & Paste window is opened and whether the search box is focused at first.

Import & Export

You can export your snippets as a backup, or to then import on another machine.

Install

Snippet Expander isn't available to install from most Linux distribution's yet. However, here's a couple of ways you can get it.

Debian & Ubuntu

Download the file with the extension .deb from the release page, then use apt to install it.

				curl -O https://git.sr.ht/~ianmjones/snippetexpander/refs/download/v1.0.2/snippetexpander_1.0.2-1_amd64.deb
				sudo apt install snippetexpander_1.0.2-1_amd64.deb

Nixpkgs & NixOS

Snippet Expander is available as separate packages in Nixpkgs unstable, and should be in the 24.05 and following stable channels.

Here's the basic commands you can use with Nixpkgs.

				nix-env -f '<nixpkgs>' -iA snippetexpanderd
				nix-env -f '<nixpkgs>' -iA snippetexpanderx
				nix-env -f '<nixpkgs>' -iA snippetexpander
				nix-env -f '<nixpkgs>' -iA snippetexpandergui

For NixOS, you can add the packages to your configuration.nix.

				environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
				  snippetexpanderd
				  snippetexpanderx
				  snippetexpander
				  snippetexpandergui
				];

Build & Install

As long as you have all the dependencies installed, you could build and install Snippet Expander manually.

				git clone https://git.sr.ht/~ianmjones/snippetexpander
				cd snippetexpander
				make
				sudo make install

For Debian, the build time dependencies are as follows, the names might be slightly different on other distributions:

				wails
				golang-go
				nodejs
				npm
				libx11-dev
				libgtk-3-dev
				libwebkit2gtk-4.0-dev
				build-essential
				pkg-config
				valac
				libatspi2.0-dev
				libgee-0.8-dev
				libglib2.0-dev
				libibus-1.0-dev
				scdoc

Wails is used to build Snippet Expander's GUI, and isn't as widely available as a package as the rest of the dependencies. To install it, just run the following command once you have Go installed.

				go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2/cmd/wails@latest
				export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/go/bin"

Wails is also available in Nixpkgs.

				nix-env -f '<nixpkgs>' -iA wails

Runtime Dependencies

The daemon has the following runtime package dependencies:

				xclip
				wl-clipboard
				xdotool
				wtype

When using X Server for display, xclip is used for copying snippets into the clipboard, and xdotool is used to paste the snippet, e.g. when using the Search & Paste window.

When using Wayland for display, wcopy (from wl-clipboard) is used for copying snippets into the clipboard, and wtype is used to paste the snippet, e.g. when using the Search & Paste window.

Snippet Pixie

Looking for Snippet Pixie, Snippet Expander's predecessor?