Espanso and Flow Launcher
I was doing a regular check on free productivity tools and came across this video:
The 2 items that interested me was a Text expander Espanso and Program launcher Flow Launcher.
Both are available on Github for free.
Espanso Text Expander
Espanso seems to be like AutoHotKey but is cross platform so can be used on Mac & Linux, so a bit more versatile, and is written in RUST. Also the library for your personal preferred text expansion keys is in YAML with a quick glance over the product. So a different setup to AutoHotKey which only runs in Windows. You can add plugins to extend the usage such as crets and different symbols for different languages. Sounds like a good one to play with, but as I’ve got that covered with AutoHotKey I don’t think I’ll explore further at this time.
Flow Launcher -Program Launcher
This is similar to a couple of other programs like wix and the one I use which is Executor. You type in something and it goers and opens the program, website search etc.
Its written in C# and is free. It seems to do the same as Executor. There seems to be nothing too different so I won’t look to experiment or transition across to it as there seems to be no new features that I need.
I’m not sure what language Executor is written in. Just found out about “#” key for doing calculations and “-?” for help key
End Comment
Good to see some new interesting free productivity tools. Although these seem to do the same as ones I have I do like the fact that Espanso is cross platform, that makes it a lot more versatile than AutoHotKey but also limited in what it does. I think I’d still go with aText as well although I’m actually paying for that but that’s also got the programming scripts as well.
Flow Launcher just seems to be a slightly newer rollout of File Launchers. I use only a minimal amount of Executor functions so not worth exploring Flow Flauncher either. If I was starting from scratch or recommending to others I may suggest these two programs. Their equivalents that I use are indespensible.
