Hey @ramonsmits,

Thank you for the feedback! What OS are you using?
The force_clipboard option might help you in this case:

  - trigger: ":regards"
    force_clipboard: true
    replace: |
       Regards,
       Ramon Smits
       Solution Architect at Particular Software

Cheers :)

I have the same issue with VS Code on Mac OS 11.1. Looks like VS Code does something weird with the input, hm?

@bitboxer yes, VS Code is probably doing a lot under the hoods. As far as my experimentation goes, the clipboard approach is the only robust one at this point

@federico-terzi can you make the clipboard way the default if you detect a vscode window? Adding the config to all replacements might look like overkill to me right now.

@bitboxer Yes, you can setup an app specific configuration for VS Code, including also this line:

backend: Clipboard

Cheers :)

I tried this:

vscode.yml:

filter_title: "Visual Studio Code"

backend: Clipboard

That, unfortunately, doesn't work.

@ramonsmits That's unfortunate! Most likely, that's due to a small misconfiguration. A couple of questions:

1. Did you place the vscode.yml file within the user/ directory? (it's in the same folder as the default.yml file)
2. Filtering by the title is not always a good choice, as sometimes VS Code does not include "Visual Studio Code" in the title. My suggestion would be to try filtering by the executable name, you can find a small guide here

Cheers :)

I'm also working on a refactor to automatically include a patch when appropriate, though it will take a while

@federico-terzi I first had it in ~\AppData\Roaming\espanso but moving it to ~\AppData\Roaming\espanso\user has the same issue.

ok, now I have:

~\AppData\Roaming\espanso\user\vscode.yml

filter_exec : Code.exe
backend: Clipboard

The above is everything I have in that file. This is not working.

@federico-terzi I'm sorry about that! I've tested the previous configuration and it's working for me. Perhaps, we need to slow down the backspace injection a bit. Could you please try changing the vscode.yml file as:

name: vscode
filter_exec: "Code.exe"
backend: Clipboard
backspace_delay: 10

Also trying to experiment with the value of backspace_delay, increasing it if necessary. The lower the value, the more responsive the expansion will be

Let me know if that helps!

@federico-terzi That sort of works, the value 10 is too low. Setting it to 12 seems to be the lowest.

FYI, my current config

name: vscode
filter_exec: "Code.exe"
backend: Clipboard
backspace_delay: 12

Can confirm, 12 is also working for me on my mac. Thanks for the fast reaction here ❤️

@ramonsmits @ramonsmits Thank you guys! I'll make sure to include this patch automatically as part of #310

@federico-terzi unfortunately I still cannot make esperanso work with VSCode on MacOS.

My config looks like:

name: vscode
filter_title: VSCode
backend: Clipboard
backspace_delay: 12

matches:
  - trigger: ":sth"
    replace: "random string"

and when I type in :sth I get: :srandom strin. It obviously seems like some issue with backspace_delay, but I tried multiple values: 0, 10, 12, 100, even 300000 etc., but the result is exactly the same. I also tried to use default backend and play with the delay - also no success, each time there were some strange artefacts.

I use Vim mode in VSCode, but after turning it off there were also similar issues (the output could be a slightly different though).

Hey @jaklan,

Thank you for experimenting with that solution! If having very high values of backspace_delay doesn't make any difference, there is a good chance espanso did not detect the patch correctly. Please try changing the filter as:

name: vscode
filter_exec: "Visual Studio Code"
backend: Clipboard
backspace_delay: 12

matches:
  - trigger: ":sth"
    replace: "random string"

If even this one does not work, you might need to find a good filter following this section (under "Finding the right filters"): https://espanso.org/docs/configuration/#application-specific-configurations

Cheers :)

@federico-terzi I can experiment with that a bit more, but in general - the filter seems to work, because the :sth trigger was defined only in this VSCode-specific yaml. So if the trigger is discovered I guess the path is not a problem.

because the :sth trigger was defined only in this VSCode-specific yaml

I see, yes, filters might be working correctly then...

I would like to highlight that I also have this issue, on MacOS 11.3.1, using VSCodium.
Below my configuration:

filter_exec: "VSCodium.app"
backend: Clipboard
backspace_delay: 30000

matches:
  - trigger: ":sth"
    replace: "random string"

The behaviour is erratic; when typing ":sth" sometimes I get the correct strings other times not really. I've played a bit with filter_title as well, without major changes. I've tried backend "Inject", and it got worst.
Any further suggestions? This completely destroys the UX when using vscode.

I really appreciate any help anyone can provide.

@doctorboyMP @jaklan Thank you guys, I've moved it to a separate discussion: #675

I have this issue and none of the solutions worked for me. My config files are synced (on G Drive) and Espanso reads the base config file correctly. But I also created a vscode.yml config file as follows:

filter_title: 'Code'
enable: true
force_clipboard: true

matches:
  - trigger: ":t"
    replace: "Works only on vscode!"

Tried using different identifiers such as filter_title: 'Visual Studio Code' (with and without quotation marks), but Espanso doesn't read the file at all.

I followed your advice to type #detect# in VSCode and got this:

title: 'vscode.yml'
exec: '/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app'
class: 'com.microsoft.VSCode'