Text expansion tools are essential for anyone who finds themselves constantly copying and pasting the same information multiple times a day. Over the years, we’ve recommended TextExpander and aText , but neither are exactly cheap. If you’re looking for a free alternative and don’t mind messing around with configuration files, you should check out Espanso.

This is a free and open source application for Windows, Mac and Linux that can do pretty much everything those paid apps can do, for free. The downside: it takes a bit more work to set up.

Let’s back up a bit. Text expansion tools let you define trigger words that you can type into any application to quickly paste in something longer. For example, I might set up such an application to replace “:jhp” with “Justin Pot,” complete with the link, to make explaining who I am in a professional email just a little bit faster. The best applications let you do this, and also offer automation for things like including the current date or even information from other programs.

Espanso is a free text expansion app. To get started, download and install the application. Windows and Mac users will find a system icon, while Linux users will have to rely entirely on the command line, which will probably not be a problem for them.