Hypoinput is a lightweight text expansion application for Windows
A text expansion is text that is automatically printed after typing some other specific text. The text that is automatically printed is known as the replacement while the specific text is known as the trigger. These two texts are what form a text expansion.
Text expansions can be fairly simple:
graph LR
a(":hi") --> b("Hello, world!")
In this example, when you type :hi, that text you typed will be erased and replaced by Hello, world!. It's simple, but these quick and short text expansions can save you a lot of time.
On the other hand, text expansions can also be complex:
graph LR
a("$bphtml") --> b("#60;!DOCTYPE html><br/>#60;html lang='en'><br/>#160;#160;#60;head><br/>#160;#160;#160;#160;#60;meta charset='UTF-8'><br/>#160;#160;#160;#160;#60;meta name='viewport' content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0'><br/>#160;#160;#160;#160;#60;meta http-equiv='X-UA-Compatible' content='ie=edge'><br/>#160;#160;#160;#160;#60;title>My Website#60;/title><br/>#160;#160;#160;#160;#60;link rel='stylesheet' href='./style.css'><br/>#160;#160;#160;#160;#60;link rel='icon' href='./favicon.ico' type='image/x-icon'><br/>#160;#160;#60;/head><br/>#160;#160;#60;body><br/>#160;#160;#160;#160;#60;main><br/>#160;#160;#160;#160;#160;#160;#160;#160;#60;h1>Welcome to My Website#60;/h1><br/>#160;#160;#160;#160;#60;/main><br/>#160;#160;#160;#160;#60;script src='index.js'>#60;/script#62;<br/>#160;#160;#60;/body><br/>#60;/html>")
style b text-align:left
As you can see, typing $bphtml produces some typical boilerplate HTML. Instead of memorizing a long piece of text or having to always look something up, you can simply keep it stored as a text expansion.
Hypoinput comes with many practical and handy features that you'd expect from a text expansion application.
Hypoinput supports Unicode characters which means there's a wide range of characters that can be printed through text expansions, including but not limited to:
- Emojis (😀😊😉😍)
- Accented letters (à, è, ì, ò, ù, À, È, Ì, Ò, Ù)
- Chinese (漢字)
Your input for getting a text expansion to trigger isn't limited to lowercase characters. With Hypoinput, your triggers can consist of both uppercase letters and special characters.
A couple valid triggers:
:_hello$GOODbye{bracket/trigger}
If you can type it, you can use it!
If you've ever wished you could have a text expander application move or adjust the cursor position for you after triggering a text expansion, then this is the application for you.
Hypoinput has some keywords that you can use in your text replacements. A few of these keywords move the cursor position:
| Keyword | Use | Example |
|---|---|---|
| {{__CURSOR__}} | Moves cursor position to this location | "Hello {{__CURSOR__}}, how are you?" |
| {{__CURSOR_PASTE__}} | Moves cursor position and pastes clipboard contents | "python_program {{__CURSOR_PASTE__}} --foo --bar" |
Hypoinput can only process one of these in each text replacement. In other words, if you have multiple {{__CURSOR__}}'s or multiple {{__CURSOR_PASTE__}}'s, only the first one will be valid and all subsequent ones will be ignored.
You can download and install Hypoinput by heading over to the Releases section and downloading the most recent .msi file. Once you've downloaded the installer file, open it and follow the onscreen directions.
When you run Hypoinput for the first time, a Settings.ini file and a TextExpansions.json file will be created. The Settings.ini file contains information related to your general settings and the TextExpansions.json file is where your text expansions will be stored.
ℹ️ If either file is missing, those files will be recreated each time the application starts
There's two ways you can add, edit, or delete a text expansion:
- by using the built-in GUI editor that's powered by PowerShell scripts
- by manually editing the
TextExpansions.jsonfile
You can find the option to do both of these things by right-clicking on the application's notification icon in the system tray.
Hypoinput features a way to easily add, edit, or delete a text expansion by using a GUI.
The easiest way to create a text expansion is by right-clicking on the application icon in the system tray and clicking on Add text expansion.
This will run a PowerShell script which will render a GUI for creating a new text expansion.
ℹ️ Since a PowerShell script is being ran, you might see a terminal window appear alongside the GUI
Similar to adding a text expansion, you can edit or delete a text expansion by right-clicking on the application icon in the system tray and clicking on Edit text expansions.
This will run a PowerShell script which will render a GUI for editing or deleting your text expansions.
You can quickly access your TextExpansions.json file by right-clicking the application icon in the system tray and clicking on Open file. This will open the file in your default text editor application.
ℹ️ The path to this file is
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Hypoinput\TextExpansions.json
Here's a sample of what your TextExpansions.json file might look like:
[
{
"trigger": ":hi",
"replacement": "Hello, world!"
},
{
"trigger": "$newline",
"replacement": "First line\nSecond line\nThird line"
},
{
"trigger": "&cursor",
"replacement": "youtube-dl \"{{__CURSOR__}}\""
}
]A few important takeaways from this:
- You must place your text expansions inside a JSON array
[] - Fields are case-sensitive
triggermust be spelled "trigger" and not "TRIGGER", "tRiGgEr", etc.replacementmust be spelled "replacement" and not "REPLACEMENT", "rEpLaCeMeNt", etc.
- You may have to escape certain characters:
- Quotation marks
" - Backslashes
\
- Quotation marks
- Newlines are indicated by
\n - Tabs are indicated by
\t - Make sure you save the file with
UTF-8encoding (and notUTF-8 with BOMencoding)
You can prevent text expansions from being triggered by right-clicking the application icon in the system tray and clicking on Disable. After disabling the application, you can then re-enable it by clicking on Enable.
