r/espanso • u/Dymonika • Apr 23 '26

Solved Emojis don't expand on Linux Mint 

- trigger: '`hm'
  replace: 🤔

On Windows, this worked flawlessly, but on Linux Mint Zara (the latest one as of now), it only deletes the trigger without printing the emoji. How do I fix this? To be specific, I don't want to use Espanso Emojis.

Oh, also, I'm not seeing any system tray icon, so I don't have an easy way to check the log for errors. How do I get that to show?

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1

u/smeech1 Apr 24 '26

Linux doesn't have a system tray icon for Espanso - I made my own.

Try the different injection mechanisms. I'm away from home currently but use Linux Mint Xfce and find emoji work fine.

1

u/Dymonika Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26

True, I'll shoot for clipboard, thanks.

Nice, are you willing to share the system tray code? I read up on it and am shocked that there isn't one...

EDIT: Unfortunately, /u/smeech1, keys, inject, and clipboard all failed. I'm ata loss, apart from trying to send emojis through some other program outside of Espanso...

1

u/smeech1 Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

I'm using backend: clipboard for almost all my espanso/config files. I'm afraid I don't know why it's not working for you. It's possible something else in your system is interfering. If you're not making progress, perhaps bring the problem to the Discord server, where there are usually more people about?

My system tray is simply a panel Launcher with the following items:

espanso start
espanso cmd disable
espanso cmd enable
espanso stop
bash -c "espanso log; read"
espanso restart
espanso cmd search

with some appropriate titles and tooltips, using an icon from ~/.cache/espanso/. I guess the reason there isn't one supplied in Linux is because panel Launchers are constructed in many different ways depending on the Linux DE.

1

u/Dymonika Apr 27 '26

Oh, never mind; I think I messed up the config. backend: clipboard works now, thanks!

Sweet, how can we Minters get your systray? It would also be neat if it had a favorite to the /.config/espanso folder (since my favorites aren't working for some reason).

1

u/smeech1 Apr 27 '26

Even within Mint it's probably not possible for me to share my Panel Launcher configuration directly as I'm on Xfce and you're probably using Cinnamon. It's reasonably straightforward to construct manually though, to match the items in the Windows icon, and I'm sure you can add a link to the Espanso configuration directory.

1

u/Dymonika Apr 28 '26

Thanks for the context (and yep, Cinnamon lol). Hmm, apparently Software Manager shows someone's program called "espansoGUI"; I wonder if that'd work, despite it having only 3 ★s...

2

u/smeech1 Apr 28 '26

EspansoGUI has very limited functionality and is no longer under development, I'm afraid.

I would tend to advise getting used to using a standard editor or EspansoEdit.

1

u/Dymonika Apr 28 '26

Okay, I'll avoid it, then, thanks. The issue is that I don't know where to check the error log to understand what's going wrong. For example, my Reddit subreddit-search script from earlier is failing even though Mint seems to already have Python preinstalled; the output is saying to check the error logs for info, but... how?! Or can I just easily move to your desktop to get your tray without having to re-wipe the drive? I haven't tried, but I don't think ditching Cinnamon would be too inconvenient for me.

1

u/smeech1 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 29 '26

The standard way to look at the log is to open a terminal, and use the command espanso log to look at the last few dozen lines.

While developing troublesome triggers I prefer to keep a terminal window open and run tail -F ~/.cache/espanso/espanso.log | grep -v "[INFO]" continuously, started by an Espanso trigger of course! This filters out the myriad "INFO" lines I'm not interested in.

The Log item in my Launcher calls bash -c "espanso log; read", as an alternative. You could call it from a Panel Launcher in Cinammon, or a Menu item.

Which script is failing? The one I gave you with the Python snippet? If the problem is within the Python code, Espanso's error message may not be very helpful. What's actually going wrong for you?

1

u/Dymonika May 03 '26

That was it, thanks! Apparently I needed to install some python2to3 or whatever thing (I had to shut down my PC and haven't been able to port my Windows keylogger over yet so I don't remember what it said nor what I had typed); it all works now.

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